Help with first guitar build

[Caleb125]

HI, I am in the process of building my first electric guitar with the help of a friend who was a professional for over 20 years. Once the initial construction is complete, it's all up to me.  I decided I want to do a Hum single Hum configuration with EMG 81TWX for the bridge, 89x for the neck and SX for the middle pickup and two mini toggle switches for the coil tapping.  My question is whether or not I really need to buy EMG's 3 pickup wiring kit seeing as all the pickups come with wiring kits, and I would prefer not to spend an extra $80 if I don't need to.  I know I'll need to buy a 5-way switch though.  Thank you for your answers.

[curtisa]

Provided you are OK with using a soldering iron and are happy to cut the ends off some of the supplied cables that come with each of the pickups, you don't need to purchase the extra wiring kit.

[mistermikev]

honestly soldering is not hard... I would go that way either way because those clips are the equiv of transistor standoffs... one good jolt away from problems imo. i was about to tell you coil splitting is not a good idea but I guess that model is a 3 coil emg... so you should be good there.  cheers

[ADFinlayson]

On 2/21/2019 at 10:25 PM, mistermikev said:

honestly soldering is not hard... I would go that way either way because those clips are the equiv of transistor standoffs... one good jolt away from problems imo. i was about to tell you coil splitting is not a good idea but I guess that model is a 3 coil emg... so you should be good there.  cheers

Why is coil-splitting not a good idea?

[mistermikev]

Just now, ADFinlayson said:

Why is coil-splitting not a good idea?

on an emg.  the emg85/81 A) are 3 conductor (one conductor is the 9v power lead), B) as I understand the design is such that the built in preamp uses one coil for sound and one coil for reducing noise.  this is the reason it doesn't require a ground to the strings... I don't believe they would even work without significant modification and they are encapsulated in epoxy C) assuming you got past that, the coils are severely underwound so pretty sure it would sound like dog poo... then again who knows... maybe it would sound good!