2 conductor wiring question

[littleredguitars2]

i'm looking at a used les paul online right now and the guy sent me a pic of the wiring that was apparently updated and i noticed the humbuckers were only soldered to one of the lugs and not to the back of the pots. its hard to tell but it looks like the two pickup braids may be soldered together. is this weird? i dont believe i've seen anything like this before

[Dave Sloven]

i'm looking at a used les paul online right now and the guy sent me a pic of the wiring that was apparently updated and i noticed the humbuckers were only soldered to one of the lugs and not to the back of the pots. its hard to tell but it looks like the two pickup braids may be soldered together. is this weird? i dont believe i've seen anything like this before

So this is not the two-conductor braid like that which came on your Stockholm?

[King Zog of Albania]

As long as there's an electrical connection with the braided wire to ground somewhere in the guitar then the circuit will work. Electrons aren't fussy about whether they travel through the back of a pot, a braided ground wire or a silver teapot as long as it completes a circuit.

[littleredguitars2]

this was the picture i meant to show in the first post. now that i can see it a little bigger than on my phone, it looks like they are soldered together, and to the groundwire. which i've never seen in a les paul. if you click the picture it zooms in a lot.

[Dave Sloven]

Looks to me like the person who did this 'upgrade' was somewhat clueless ...

Looks like it's had solder on the back of the pots and it's been removed.

What I am guessing is that the guy stripped too much braid off the end of the wires and then didn't have enough lead to reach the back of that bridge volume pot to solder it on, and then came up with this bush mechanic way of grounding the pickups.  I would avoid this instrument because I wouldn't like to think about other repairs and upgrades that this guy might have made himself without properly thinking them through.

[darkbluemurder]

and i noticed the humbuckers were only soldered to one of the lugs and not to the back of the pots. its hard to tell but it looks like the two pickup braids may be soldered together.

That's what I am seeing as well.

 

is this weird?

Yes, it is a bit hamfisted but it will work as long as the other braided wire is soldered to a ground connection. Thanks to the grounding plate the bridge volume pot is grounded as well - if the pots were mounted into the bare wood the circuit would not work (correctly).
 

i dont believe i've seen anything like this before

I did - and it's no fun if the person who did it stuffed the connection into the wiring canal after he finished this "work"  ... if I were in a situation like this I would have wound a wire around the braided wire, soldered it there and from there to the back of the volume pot.

Cheers Stephan

[littleredguitars2]

yeah i've also used an extra wire to connect the braid to a pot before when i got my prewired BK pickguard that i ended up dismantling. GRANTED, if i bought this, i'm willing to bet i'd swap the pickups for some BKs anyway. likely a riff raff mule combo.