We LOVE the mechanisms of guitar electronics and firmly believe that they make up an integral part of your guitar or bass (it is an electric guitar afterall) and therefore severely impact its tone.
Our channel is dedicated to educate and demonstrate - how to guides, video tutorials and installation advice for our wiring kits and general guitar/bass soldering tips. We also dive into a bit of theory every now and then - we can get a bit nerdy.
All of our content is free - the idea is to give enough confidence and knowledge to those who might be daunted about the prospect of soldering and the murky world of guitar wiring. We only ask that you like and subscribe if you enjoy our content.
We can't guarantee regular content, nor will we stick to a rigorous posting schedule but our aim is to push out high quality informative, easy to follow educational videos.
Hey !!! Great videos, thank you so much. I have a question about this dual tone capacitor. In a tone master (coming from 3 way toggle and going directly to jack), shoul I take the hot wire from 3 way toggle into the middle lug, and from the same lug to the jack output ?
Could one simply wire the hot wire of the neck to the connector that was previously connected to the hot of the middle pickup? That would give you access to the neck solo, bridge solo, and neck + bridge...
Wow. I tried doing this with toneshapers hss2 schematic but had problems. Only the 3,4 positions seemed to work. Theres a lot of things that are different. I'm going to try your way and see what happens. Argh!
Did you have to remove any wood from the cavity to get it to fit? I'm finding that it's likely going to be impossible to get the switch to fit in my control cavity otherwise.
Is it possible to connect a push-pull potentiometer in such a way that when using a high gain pickup, there is a full signal in one position of the potentiometer and a slightly attenuated signal in the other position?
Great Lesson, I have a question, I am upgrading my 78 Fender Jazz with Seymour Duncan Weather report passive pickups the neck pickup is not as hot as the bridge pickup they came on had a black and yellow wires and the other had black and red wires? I'm am planning on re doing the wires exactly like your video how would you know where the black wire should go or if it matters? Thanks from Minneapolis just Subbed as well as well
A few tips: Remove the pot rear cover oxidation layer (factor tinning scale), use Scotchbrite super fine using a die grinder or a Dremel, then blow off any debris with compressed air and do a final wipe with IPA. Just remove the oxidation layer and do not grind down to base metal. Even if you are using eutectic leaded solder, use an alloy that includes silver. The pot rear cover tinning solders best with solder with silver in it, as you can see with the lead-free solder used in the video which has a high silver content. If possible it is best to use leaded solder due to its lower melting temperature than lead-free. If you add too much heat to the pot rear cover you could damage the pot. So keep the soldering cycles to the rear cover to a minimum, ideal would be just one. Add additional liquid flux (select one that is compatible with the solder wire flux) when soldering to the back of the rear cover. This is especially true with Gavitt braided push back wire, where the braid always seems to be highly oxidized, as you can clearly see in the video. If you use additional flux and use a third hand to hold the connection together. If you use additional flux and a high power soldering station, you do not need to pre-tin the pot rear cover, which is already pre-tinned from the factory. Pre-tinning the pot rear cover is very popular, but not needed if you use the proper equipment and soldering method. If you feel the solder joint has too much oxidation just add additional liquid flux and solder the joint. I only really pre-tin stranded wire if I want to wrap around and eyelet or a post before soldering. Before pre-tinning the stranded wire add liquid flux and then solder. The ideal method is to dip in liquid flux and then solder with a solder pot. After soldering to the pot rear cover remove any excess flux with IPA. Instead of using Gavitt single conductor push back wire you could use Teflon single conductor with shielded braid and outer Teflon jacket. The Teflon wire will not absorb moisture like the Gavitt cloth wire and you can solder the braid directly to the pot rear cover and it will not readily melt like PVC jacket wire, and the copper braid and and stranded copper conductor are silver coated, which works well with a solder that has a silver content. Unfortunately, Teflon wire is very expensive, although you do not use a great deal of it when wiring a guitar. I think the Teflon wire will perform better than the cloth Gavitt over time. Having an outer jacket means you do not need to insulate it with heat shrink or sleeving. When using bus wire you can clean the oxidation off with a scotchbrite pad and wipe with IPA before soldering. It will solder better if you clean it first. You can insulate tinned bus wire or component leads using semi-clear Teflon sleeving, which is very high temp and will not readily melt. Here again, Teflon sleeving is not inexpensive. Soldering to the pot rear cover quickly and effectively requires a high power temperature controlled soldering station (minimum around 60 Watts) and the proper tip. If you have a cartridge based soldering station (Pace, JBC, etc.) you would select a very broad chisel tip high thermal load tip and not a small conical tip as shown in the video. The ideal station would be the cartridge based JBC HDE, having a minimum power of 200 Watts, but as with all good equipment it is very expensive. Obviously, the above is not a low cost method. However, many vintage guitar projects are performed on guitars that have a value in the thousands of dollars. Even if the guitar is not vintage but lets say a 1960s re-issue Les Paul Standard, it will cost $2800.00 (2024 Sweetwater on sale).
I'm just now learning how to use the multimeter. I have a project where a push/pull pot went bad so I decided to rewire the whole guitar. With the multimeter I checked all four pots and I get either OL or 0.0. Surely all four pots aren't bad? The other 3 worked fine before.
Amazing tutorial, I followed it after buying a wiring kit and new pickups and it worked perfectly despite me not soldering anything for 8 years. (Ok, I had to redo one dodgy joint which broke 😂)
Listen man, yes we do call it "sawter," and I have no Idea why, and despite being an American, I much prefer the UK pronunciation, so absolutely no need to apologize.
I'm rewireing a MK 530p Grounding issues. I'm using the original pickups. The neck pickup has been mo.dified for 3 wires ,but the bridge pickup also has 3 wires but the fender telecaster bridge pick up diagram shows a bridge pickup showing only 2 wires ( hot & ground) . So do I clip one wire or solder it to a pot? I have all new fender telecaster parts. (Not puckups.
not a pointless mod if you want to use the occasional fuzz pedal. fuzzes tend not to like treble bleed circuits, so having it be switchable is really useful.
On my project the alarm sounds when I place the multimeter on the lug of the volume pots that the selector cables are soldered to. Based on your video am I correct that it should not alarm?
I have been all over the net for a week to learn how to wier all-day today looming for an iron purched a 60 watts.All your vedi9s how you instructed wss grest now implementing so thank you imo your number one in this wiering business. wow, factor 100% and highly appreciated will recomend...Roland aka ..RocknRollflat5
? This tip did not solve my problem and I’m hoping that you would suggest something else. I just put together a diy kit with all new parts 4 CTS pots, and two humbuckers wired 50s style. I get sound from both pickups but very very low and only when the volume pot is all the way up. With a multi meter I have verified that everything is grounded, the pickups are at appropriate resistance (7-8k) and the capacitors are at about .23. I am at a loss to know what to do next. Thank you for your help.
Why not use a true balance pot? It loos like you are mixing more or less of one sound with the other sound(s) that is always at 100%. I think it is more versatile for the pot to be a dual control, such that it varies both tones (one goes up while the other goes down)...so you can get any combination from 100% of one & 0% of the other, to the reverse of that, & any combination of percentages in between.