Lucius Paisley

Anybody can play guitar from their first lesson. You just have to stay one lesson ahead of him.

If you can play left-handed and teach him to mirror everything you're doing, learning right-handed shouldn't be a problem.

It should, but I only just noticed now that my pickup is technically upside down, so I guess not. Either way, it has to sit in the body so the wiring is 'comfortable' and if it was facing the other way the wires would be folded under the pickup. I doubt that would be good. The new pickup is also in the same position as the one that was in there when I bought it, facing the same way as the guitar logo on the headstock. If a guitars 'handedness' was more easily noticeable, it would save me a lot of time walking into guitar stores. Two seconds at the window instead of five minutes walking up an aisle and back.

Here is my most recent "build". Well, I got some help - I don't have a router and didn't think I needed one just for the one job. It's all pretty standard - take out the original pickups, remove the tone control, replace the bridge pickup with a Fishman Fluence Modern Humbucker connected to a push/pull volume pot, with added kill switch. I'd cover the space where the tone control used to be, but I really can't be bothered. You can see the battery for the pickup through the hole, which is held inside the main cavity with a velcro dot. The influence for the setup comes from the Schecter Balsac The Jaws 'O Death "JAW" guitar. Which as shown here, has the Fluence pickup, the volume and kill switch. However, what it doesn't have is the "left-handed" feature, which is quite critical for me when buying guitars. Still, even after the costs of the guitar, electronics, minor routing work (the output jack is slightly larger than what I had before), I have essentially saved myself around $1000. It might not be my own design, but I've made it my own.

I actually had it there, but it didn't look "right". Back it goes. And kill switch... Then I'm good to go.

Exactly. I think this is right... Looking at the battery hookup, since the pickup is pulling power from the battery, I am correct in thinking the 'kill switch' should be between the red wire i.e. where the insulation is suggested. In effect, turning the pickup on and off?

I just want the two basic voices associated with the single pickup as seen "plugged in" per the diagram, voice 1/voice 2, no coil tapping or split coil or whatever you want to call it. And for the pickup to just have the one control i.e. volume. (If you can call it) Basically, I'm trying to emulate the Balsac Schecter Jaw guitar configuration, but going in "blind" as I've not heard the guitar on it's own. It also as a kill toggle, but I already now how to do that.

Sorry to jump onto an old thread (and for not knowing how to transfer this topic to the correct help forum) , but I recently purchased a Fishman Fluence Modern Humbucker (bridge ceramic) and am not 100% certain how to wire it up correctly based on the instructions that came in the box, which assumes I've also got the corresponding neck pickup and way more control pots than I do. From what I can see of your configuration, you have the volume/push-pull and toggle switch, which is very similar to what I'm after, but I'm left with the predicament of "where do I go from here?". So far, this is my attempt at figuring out a working diagram... Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks.

Done for now. The bridge pickup cuts off randomly, but I'm tired of messing with it. I'll get someone to look at it at some point. The tape covers the old volume slot, while the volume control now sits disconnected in the old tone slot - just because it looks plain without a control knob.

Yeah, I'll be changing that over later today. As well as attaching a wire between the switch and washer as a precaution, and so I don't have to check it twice. It's probably redundant, but what the hell, it was the grounding point for the middle pickup before I removed that.

I "kind" of get what you're saying, but without demonstration - diagrams, etc - and more likely, proper sleep, it'll probably take another couple of readthroughs. Nonetheless, I've connected it all up, and it's mostly successful. The kill position is perfect, I can "hear" the electricity, but there's no hum, buzz or anything. Unfortunately, not so much with the pickups, they buzz like crazy, which gets better or worse if I wiggle the switch in certain directions. Maybe this is due to a cheap switch, I'm not sure, but I'm going to connect a wire from the switch to the pot (as your second definition of 'ground') and see if that helps.

Okay, now I have a major hiccup. Burning myself with the soldering iron was one thing, dropping it on top of the electronics was another. Snipped and stripped the wires to get rid of the damage, but now there are issues with wire length, and I'm kind of jack of the whole f'ing thing. SO, I'm taking the volume pot out of the loop (putting it in place of the tone pot because I like how it looks, but leaving it disconnected and using it to ground the bridge) and if I've got it right, hooking the output to the volume lug on the switch, thusly - Now I'm under the impression that when a pickup is directly attached to the output, the corresponding ground wires are also connected. But since I'm employing the 3 way switch (two pickups / "kill" switch), this isn't needed? And rather than letting that remaining ground (as identified) sit in the open, I can use a washer ring and then screw that into the body. Do I have this right? And does the washer need to be made of any specific type of metal or will a generic metal washer be fine?

Grounding the switch seems to have knocked the sound out completely. I'll disconnect it later and see what difference that makes. Something seems very wrong about that.

Slight hiccup. I've connected everything according to the schematic, however while testing the guitar, the sound is intermittent - either it comes in and out by itself, or I will touch the volume pot or switch and the sound will come on. The schematic doesn't have a grounding wire coming from the switch to anywhere, but to save space, I've attached the grounding wire from the bridge to the switch, which I'm assuming is okay because I'm not dead and the guitar isn't on fire. Any suggestions? I'm SO close.

After trying to source a local luthier, I gave up and just went with Warmoth for my custom pickguard, which arrived today. So, only (almost) 5 months later, I'm now at the following stage... I just need to expand the holes for volume and tone - volume pot will be positioned where the second tone pot would usually be, so it will sit at the top.- then I can wire it all up. All the while hoping for the best.

Right. I don't have any spare wire at the moment, so hopefully if I reconnect that wire to the bridge, it will reach. I guess I had better start attaching the bridge.

I have taken out the FAT6 bridge in order to replace it with a hardtail - one of these. For the moment, I have screwed the tremolo claw into the body so it isn't shaking about. Now will leaving the claw be enough, or do I need to ground the bridge as well?

Okay. So I think I have this right (left-handed by the way, in case I've done this upside down). Right now, I have wires coming out of everywhere - output, pickups, wire for volume pot, and the ground wire that originally led from the switch to the volume pot... and since I've disconnected the tone pot, I am left with its grounding wire which leads to the tremolo claw. I think? the switch still needs a grounding wire - the diagram above isn't clear - however, do I need to put back the original wire connecting to the volume pot, or can I use the "old" tone pot grounding wire instead? Both of which leaves me with one wire too many.

It's an Alpha 3-way switch, the pickups are stock Infinities. The closest diagram I could find was for the Ibanez GRX20 - which leaves out the red wires completely - but of course, wires up the 3-way in the standard way, which is fine for a strat, but not what I'm after. The grounding isn't shown in the diagram because it's just more wires heading to nowhere, but I've got that sorted. If the red wires do end up being necessary, I guess it won't take long to find out.

In the middle of a modification, and need a little help on a few possibilities. I'm changing an Ibanez Gio (H/S/H) from a 5 switch to a 3 switch, and taking out the middle pickup entirely. Ultimately having a switch configuration of Bridge pickup/Neck pickup/No pickup (off). Now, I read on another forum that if I just wanted to take out the positions 2 and 4 (neck/middle & middle/bridge) when swapping the switch, all that needs to be done is to wire up the 3-switch like it's a 5-switch. To me, that *sounds* correct, but can anybody confirm this is the case? I can't seem to find any diagrams of such a configuration. If that is the case - if I then took out the middle pickup and moved the next pickup over / in its place, would this give me what I'm looking for? Diagram included, if anybody has any pointers. Thanks.

Here's to hoping. Since it's a 1/2 sized guitar, it should be a small job, so I shouldn't be too fussy about having to change it if it's done wrong the first time.

The switch in the first two pictures is how it was wired when I opened up the guitar. There's no numbers of any kind on the card at all, and I've tried going by an image search on Google, without success. I can kind of see how it does what it does, but the Seymour Duncan wiring diagrams can be a touch too specific, so it might just be a guessing game for now.

Hey, I'm in the middle of pulling the guts out of a cheapy guitar ($39 - SCORE!) before wiring it up again, andI'm trying to follow one of those free SD diagrams, but of course their little pictures aren't translating in my head into what it is exactly i'm looking at from the inside of this guitar, so I need a little help... Basically, from left to right, we have - 1+2 soldered together / 2 - to one pickup / 3 is wired to 5 / 4 is wired to the volume pot / 6 - to the other pickup / 6+7 soldered together, and as you can see that last wire soldered to the 'box' is the grounding wire for the tone pot... well, you can't see it, see it, but you know what I mean. Anyway, can anybody tell me how all the above translates to this diagram component? Thanks.

I thought it would be something like that. I bogged myself down with frequency graphs for the past two days, I may have learnt a lot, but I've probably forgotten it by now. Excellent news. Thanks.

New user here trying out my first modification to a cheapy Squier Bullet. This one... Yes, it's upside down. It was a choice between a lefty and a pink guitar. I think I made the right choice. The nut has been flipped, as well as the pickups, then restrung to accommodate me. So, basically, what I'm trying to do is knock out the bridge pickup, the tone controls, and be left with volume only on the neck and middle pickups. HOWEVER, because I like the sound of neck tone on 10 and middle tone on 0, I'm wonder if there is any way to "fake" a tone control with perhaps a resister or capacitor so I make the sound of the middle pickup a permanent thing - never mind if I ever want to change that sound, that's what effects pedals are for. Does anybody have anything similar to this or an idea how I could make this happen? Thanks from an electronics novice and group newbie.