Author Topic: can i do it myself? (Read 21654 times)

CJ · « **Reply #45 on:** April 13, 2007, 02:46:51 AM »

Quote from: FELINEGUITARS

All will become instantly clear once you try to remove the scratchplate.

yeah i'm sure it will. what philly said was important though. that one wire might've gotten me all confused and ish.

CJ · « **Reply #46 on:** April 24, 2007, 09:22:55 PM »

so i got the pickup, it was a braided two conductor. It looks like one wire, braided together. do i need to strip it down a little to get the second wire?

WezV · « **Reply #47 on:** April 25, 2007, 06:58:10 PM »

Unravel the braiding for about an inch rather than cutting it away. there will be the lead wire in the middle and the braid can be twisted back together

Tarzan · « **Reply #48 on:** April 25, 2007, 07:03:56 PM »

looks like i did mine slightly wrong, but it works fine, so should be alright. Otherwise i'll fix it.

CJ · « **Reply #49 on:** April 25, 2007, 11:31:32 PM »

then which wire goes where

Philly Q · « **Reply #50 on:** April 25, 2007, 11:37:01 PM »

The braid goes to the back of the volume control, the wire goes to the left-hand tag on the same pot.

CJ · « **Reply #51 on:** April 25, 2007, 11:46:00 PM »

nice, so all i have to do is unsolder that thin wire that will be attaching my pickguard to my guitar when i go to take out the pickguard. then i unsolder any wires attached to my bridge pickup, and then most likely just solder the new wires where the old ones were? or where you said philly? nothing else?

Philly Q · « **Reply #52 on:** April 26, 2007, 12:00:50 AM »

Exactly what you said.

The old pickup (if it's the original Gibson 500T) will almost certainly have the same type of braided 2-conductor wire as the new one.

So it should just be a matter of removing the old pickup and putting the new one in exactly the same way.

CJ · « **Reply #53 on:** April 26, 2007, 01:59:13 AM »

ok i just took out my pickguard and i see how clear everything is now. I'm guessing i don't need to unsolder the ground wire from bridge if i don't need to, correct? my soldering iron is adjustable up to 50 watts i think. what should i set it on?

CJ · « **Reply #54 on:** April 26, 2007, 02:45:06 AM »

well damn i was just about to start unsoldering when i noticed that i think my original guess was right- my original wiring is all wrong. It doesn't even come close to matching up with that diagram. i'll take a pic in a second if someone could look.

CJ · « **Reply #55 on:** April 26, 2007, 03:18:23 AM »

triple post. :oops:

CJ · « **Reply #56 on:** April 26, 2007, 03:20:18 AM »

well, you can't really see this picture, but you should be able to see how its wrong. First of all, unless that duncan pickup wiring diagram was wrong, two of the braided cables shouldn't have gone to the same pot. the one with the red wire coming out of it and going up is the bridge pickup, and i thought that was supposed to go right to the volume pot tag. the lower left of the screen would be where the input jack is, so you know what you're looking at. the wire that comes from the left, and then loops under is the bridge wire. this is the wire that ends up going up to the other pot.

bottom line: gibson sucks and i'm taking this to the shop. I hope they don't charge extra for having to rewire...

Philly Q · « **Reply #57 on:** April 26, 2007, 06:33:15 PM »

It's very hard to tell from the pic, but does that long red wire connect (a) to the black wire from the bridge pickup and (b) to the first tag on the second volume control? That should work OK. It's not wrong to solder both braids to the same pot, they just need to be soldered to ground "somewhere", but it's an untidy way of doing it.

There should then be a (brown?) wire from the middle tag of each volume control to the outer tags on the switch. The middle two tags on the switch should be joined together and wired to the third tag on the tone control.

Is the wire from the bridge connected to the back of a pot? If it is, that's OK too.

What I'm wondering is, what the hell is that red stuff on the back of the second volume pot?

CJ · « **Reply #58 on:** April 26, 2007, 09:20:34 PM »

Quote from: Philly Q

It's very hard to tell from the pic, but does that long red wire connect (a) to the black wire from the bridge pickup and (b) to the first tag on the second volume control? That should work OK. It's not wrong to solder both braids to the same pot, they just need to be soldered to ground "somewhere", but it's an untidy way of doing it.

There should then be a (brown?) wire from the middle tag of each volume control to the outer tags on the switch. The middle two tags on the switch should be joined together and wired to the third tag on the tone control.

Is the wire from the bridge connected to the back of a pot? If it is, that's OK too.

What I'm wondering is, what the hell is that red stuff on the back of the second volume pot?

yeah sorry about the bad pic, i just wanted to take one real quick. anyway, yeah that long red wire goes to i think the tag on the upper pot in the picture. The red stuff is a piece of tape, which i'm not sure why its there. There was also some black tape holding stuff together. I don't know what the hell was going on.

Anyway, my dad left for a business trip so i don't have any help. I just took it down to the shop down the street, i don't feel like messing with it, its not worth it. The guy said he'd put in the new pickup exactly the same as the old one was in, he didn't want to rewire it. I told him that was fine since i wasn't really having a problem before. He said that someone had been in my guitar and gibson definitely wouldn't have done that. i'm not so sure these days. Anyway, he said it'd only cost about $20-30 bucks and he'd have it done by the end of today or tomorrow.

Oh, and i asked him about the pickup covers, he popped them right off. Apparently they weren't soldered on.

Tarzan · « **Reply #59 on:** April 26, 2007, 09:25:41 PM »

there always seems to be something holding all of the wires together, i think thats just for neatness.