Wiring for Pacifica 112

[Mr. Air]

I'm a total beginner to the wiring business so I hope some of you more experienced tech guys can give me some advice.

I'm looking for a good (and hopefuly simple) way to wire my Pacifica 112 with one volume and one tone knob. Anyone who has some suggestions/great experience with this kind of guitar?

Since I'm brand new to the tech area I have a few beginners questions that I hope someone will answer.

1. On diagrams it seems like one of the volume pots "legs" (or what ever you call these things?) is soldered to the back of the pot. Is there some special reason for doing this? I can see that it isn't done in my guitar as it came from the factory.

2. Is there an "in" or "out" side of a 5-way switch? Should it be installed in the pickguard facing a special direction?

Well that's it for now. I hope someone can help me take my baby steps into the wonderous world of guitar wiring.

[gingataff]

It's getting late here but I'll see if I can help.

RE #1: The tab that is bent back and soldered to the pot case is grounded, Les Paul types have this on tone pots too.

#2: Assuming you have a CRL or Oak type switch you will see a wiper that makes contact with the tabs as you move it (if you have an enclosed plastic type switch you will see nothing, so get yourself a decent switch as they are easier to work on and are much more durable). Some of the tabs are longer and are always in contact with the wiper (one on each side of the switch).
One of these is the ground and the other is the "out". It doesn't matter which one you choose for ground and output as they're mirror images of each other but you must wire the "hot" of the pickups to the same side of the switch as your chosen "out".
You can see that as you move the switch the wiper chooses which pickup(s) to connect with the "out".

If you feel adventurous you can then connect other wires from the pickups to the "ground" side of the switch to perform coil splitting. In fact you may choose to use one of the other shorter tabs as ground, it depends on what you plan to do.

There are some good diagrams on this site http://guitarelectronics.zoovy.com/category/wiringresources/