Southpa Posted October 19, 2008 Report Share Posted October 19, 2008 We should have a little contest to see who can post the worst wiring job ever. Heres one from my buddy's LP copy. The guy is an excellent journeyman painter but leaves a lot to be desired in the soldering area. We've got little pieces of black electrical tape, a bit of green masking tape and we can't forget the use of that speaker wire! Anyway, the guitar weighs in a 10 lbs, its a heavy sob. My friend asked me to strip it down, then he is going to town with the router and will chamber a couple lbs out of the body. We initially discussed running the whole thing thru a bandsaw, the guitar is actually a true mahogany back and maple top, chambering the back and then gluing them back together. Sounds like a risky, dangerous undertaking, not to mention losing a "kerfs worth" of wood in the thickness. So instead, I think the idea is to rout a large 1/8" deep area off the back, avoiding 4" centerline and existing cavities, then chamber said area leaving 1/4" ledge all around. Then make a 1/8" thick cover plate for the whole routed area and gluing that on. All seams will be filled, sanded, then finish the body ie. primer, paint and clear. I will scavenge what I need from the hardware and incorporate this 'n that into the scaled down Flying-V I will be building for his son. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Narcissism Posted October 19, 2008 Report Share Posted October 19, 2008 Gotta love it! Unfortunately (well, more fortunately than not) i don't have any pictures of dirty wiring from me. I always try to wire clean with properly colored wires with like gauges. However, if you would like to see things I've fixed, you can look inside any low end Ibanez RG or GRX models. I wish I'd taken a picture of the Ibanez from the 70's that i fixed up. Little teeny tiny wires that were all rusted up and all nice and folded up inside a rats nest of heat shrink! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j. pierce Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 I had a bass brought to me. Owner tells me, "The outputs dead, I opened it up and saw the wire wasn't connected to the jack. I tried to solder it back one, but it went south on me again." No wonder. He folded the wire on, and then "soldered" it with hot-melt glue. I've had a couple of a lot of guitars brought to me with intermittent problems traced to the owners hack-handed attempts at soldering, using speaker wire he can't fit through the tabs on the pot - so to make it fit, extra strands of the stranded wire are left sticking out sideways moving around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToneMonkey Posted October 21, 2008 Report Share Posted October 21, 2008 My mates got a load of flouresent pink wire and has promised to use it next time I send a guitar to him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluesy Posted October 21, 2008 Report Share Posted October 21, 2008 My mates got a load of flouresent pink wire and has promised to use it next time I send a guitar to him. He should change the cover plate to a clear one so it's easy to see the wiring. Maybe add some lights like they do on gaming PCs as well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Marossy Posted October 22, 2008 Report Share Posted October 22, 2008 It's not pretty, but speaker wire works just as well as any other kind of wire. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psw Posted October 22, 2008 Report Share Posted October 22, 2008 It's not pretty, but speaker wire works just as well as any other kind of wire. That's true, but I find chicken wire a little impractical and hard to solder...and barb wire tends to cause sores when the solder flux gets into the wounds...just a tip! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djhollowman Posted October 25, 2008 Report Share Posted October 25, 2008 Ooh ooh, can I have a go?? Here's one I got to rewire: OK OK, so it doesn't look that bad.....BUT notice how the humbucker had been "disconnected", leaving almost no wire to hook up? Notice how it's dead anyway, it has no earth! The single coil pickup had its wires chopped off right there on the pickup, leaving no choice but to solder them back in to the ends of the coils. The volume pot wouldn't turn at all - maybe it had been totally roasted by a soldering iron? I gave the boy an old humbucker I was gonna toss out, put in a new vol pot, replaced every piece of wire, and it's fine now. The owner is delighted with it, he can't believe how much quieter the humbucker is! (He knows I replaced it.) It made me smile anyway. DJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psw Posted October 27, 2008 Report Share Posted October 27, 2008 Ok...I confess to this... A year later, and I still can't bear to look at it and all the wires are still hanging out of it. Let this be a warning not to over complicate things or get too tricky! Remember, just because you can do something...does not mean that you should! Still...all the soldering is perfect and the wires at least the appropriate size...there's just too many of them! pete Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djhollowman Posted October 27, 2008 Report Share Posted October 27, 2008 ...oooohhh....looook at allll the preeeetttty colooouuurrrssssss.................... DJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Marossy Posted October 27, 2008 Report Share Posted October 27, 2008 Ooh ooh, can I have a go?? Here's one I got to rewire: OK OK, so it doesn't look that bad.....BUT notice how the humbucker had been "disconnected", leaving almost no wire to hook up? Notice how it's dead anyway, it has no earth! The single coil pickup had its wires chopped off right there on the pickup, leaving no choice but to solder them back in to the ends of the coils. The volume pot wouldn't turn at all - maybe it had been totally roasted by a soldering iron? I gave the boy an old humbucker I was gonna toss out, put in a new vol pot, replaced every piece of wire, and it's fine now. The owner is delighted with it, he can't believe how much quieter the humbucker is! (He knows I replaced it.) It made me smile anyway. DJ Yeah, that looks like a hack job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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