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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 11, 2018 at 3:25pm

There's a lot of different ways to wire the controls and I've always followed a scheme I found back in the 90's. That was to wire the pickups to the switch, then to the volume lug 1, then volume lug 2 to tone lug 1, tone lug 2 to jack. Volume lug 3 to ground and tone lug 3 to cap and other side of cap to ground. Wish I had the software to lay that out because it's a scheme that I haven't seen for some time on the internet. It's supposed to give brighter tone and more of a full sweep control from the pots. Don't know if that part is true, but it has always served me well.

You may find several different ways to wire the controls that are listed as "50's wiring" too.  Lots of them use the cap between the volume and tone pots while some don't. I'll open it up and play around with it soon and see if I can get any better results and thanks for the help. I already have a few 1meg pots laying around and I'm not against just going with 2 volume pots without tone pots. Someone else mentioned the G & L PTB wiring system. It's 1 volume/1 treble/1 bass controls with each pot having a different value cap to roll off/on how much bass/treble you want.

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on November 10, 2018 at 9:08pm

Hope tone knob swap works for ya. Easier than swapping mags. I watch an experiment using a brass plate under a pickup to 'twang' the sound. The guy used physics to explained the effect.

I got my mags from Tone Kraft ToneKraft.com. They have 2, 3, 5 and 8. Alnico bars in a few sizes.

And speaking of pots. The pots for Gitty came in today. Good to know i have quality stuff for my next single coil build. 

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 11, 2018 at 3:39pm

When swapping pots, you need to swap both because the volume acts like a level for the tone pot when you wire to volume first. If you wire to tone first, it doesn't effect it as much.

Swapping mags can be difficult. It was easy to do with the Asian made double coil pickup I did a couple months ago. It really depends on how they are put together and if they are epoxy sealed or not. The epoxy sealed pickups and the Fender Style pickups with individual magnet pole pieces are the ones you don't want to mess with.

Thanks for the link. I've been buying from Stewmac and their prices are good, but the choices are slim. A2 and A5 are all they have. Mojotone has a lot of different choices too.

Gitty's Bourns pots are great. Stewmac has the large Alpha, CTS and CTS grade Emerson pots which are great too, but a bit pricey. Guitarfetish has been great in the past, it's been probably 8 months since my last purchase from them.(large Alpha's)

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on November 11, 2018 at 9:07pm

Everything i've seen on line talked about only swapping the pole mags out of cheap pickups. They usually have plastic bobbins the mags slip into. The idea is if it's easy to move the magnet then it's safe to take it out. All the cheap ones I have are metal poles with bar mags underneath. 

guitar fetish has a full line of their 'custom tapered pots. A few Alpha pots and their cheap ones. Guitarelectronics.com ripped me off big time. Kept sending me the wrong stuff. Ended up sending two unopened orders back.  They reinburst me for only one. Out of $150+ I got $80 back. Then they sent a partial replacement for the second wrong order. The invoice said ten. They shipped 5. And guess what. Those fiver were the wrong pots. Those wrong pots cost me $14 a piece. Never again. I like the idea of buying from a real music business. But I'll go to Ebay or Amazon before I ever go back to guitarelectronics.com 

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 12, 2018 at 1:09pm

Correct on the plastic bobbin pickups - easy to deal with.

You have had a bad time ordering pots. It's getting harder to find full sized pots with split knurled shafts too. Everybody has the mini pots, but the full size ones were hard to find last time I got some and a lot of had the smooth shaft instead of the split knurl shaft. The smaller ones are cheaper to make.

Still can't post pics of my guitar, they come out way huge and on the side instead of up and down. I got them to post on my page though, so if anybody is interested in how it looks they can go to my page and look at my album of pics.

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Permalink Reply by BrianQ. on November 14, 2018 at 6:51pm

Where are you buying your pots Paul?

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on November 14, 2018 at 7:05pm

Just ordered more from Gitty. If he doesn't have the parts I need I'll go to Ebay or pay more for them through Stewmac. 

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 16, 2018 at 7:08pm

I bought some Emerson-CTS quality ones from Stewmac for my 65" MIJ ES330 clone guitar because I didn't want to go through fishing pots through F-Holes more than I have to. LOL

The recent batch of pots that I bought were from Guitarfetish and C.B.Gitty.

The last time I looked on Mouser's website, I couldn't find any knurled split shaft pots, they were all smooth shaft. Antique Electronics has a lot of good deals on good quality parts. Allparts can be pricey on certain items as well as Stewmac.

Haven't tried Digi-Tech. I'll check them out. Thanks BrianQ.

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Permalink Reply by BrianQ. on November 15, 2018 at 7:52am

May I suggest Mouser, Allparts,Antique electronics & digi-tech, cause already mentioned stewmac

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 16, 2018 at 7:09pm

Another supplier that I missed earlier is Smallbear Electronics.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on December 1, 2018 at 8:24am

I removed the adjustment screw springs and ran these pickups all the way up as far as they will go without touching the strings and I'm able to get some Filtertron tone from them like that. So lowering them down a bit and using 1 meg pots should do the trick without taking the pickups apart and modifying them.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Fred Johnson on November 14, 2018 at 1:17am

Just come off the workbench.though I'm thinking of up grading the machine heads.

3.6mm ply used in the construction of the body,reclaimed mahogany neck with walnut headstock facing and heel cap.

The fingerboard was advertised as rosewood,I thought at that price I gotta have a couple of those,72 years old and I still haven't learned,seems to be some sort of composite.Still, more of the high end makers are using composites these days !

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