ES-3 Wiring confusion

Attachment 43256 Hello! I am beginning to work on the wiring for my ES-3 while I let the poly cure. I am making a wiring diagram that is more accurate for the ES-3 in terms of the placement of the parts, but I’m a bit confused about some of the connections on the PitBull diagram. Am I correct in saying that the switch is grounded to the neck tone pot, the jack and bridge wire are both grounded to the bridge volume pot, and both pickups are grounded to the neck volume pot? Also, does the diagram want you to ground the jack and bridge wire to the bridge volume using separate wires? Can I ground wires to different pots in order to avoid overcrowding, or does it matter which pots the wires are grounded to? Anything helps!!

You can use any pot to ground wires, as long as all the backs of the pots are connected together and grounded. The only thing you want to try and avoid doing is creating a ring with the ground wires. I'd definitely ground the bridge pickup on the bridge volume pot and the neck pickup on the neck volume pot.

I agree that the wiring diagram isn't optimised for an ES-3 and the way it's wires run. It was probably one of the first diagrams done and whilst technically it works, it's not very ergonomic!

Definitely make up a cardboard template when wiring the pots together, and mark on the position of the F-hole so you can arrange the wires to run around the outside of the F-hole. You may find that taping or cable tying some wires together is necessary to keep everything neat. Also consider how the pickup wires will run to avoid being seen.

Draw it out, and post a photo of it if you want it checked or commented on.

Attachment 43257 here is a picture of the template I made to try make sure all the wires are long enough

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

You can use any pot to ground wires, as long as all the backs of the pots are connected together and grounded. The only thing you want to try and avoid doing is creating a ring with the ground wires. I'd definitely ground the bridge pickup on the bridge volume pot and the neck pickup on the neck volume pot.

I agree that the wiring diagram isn't optimised for an ES-3 and the way it's wires run. It was probably one of the first diagrams done and whilst technically it works, it's not very ergonomic!

Definitely make up a cardboard template when wiring the pots together, and mark on the position of the F-hole so you can arrange the wires to run around the outside of the F-hole. You may find that taping or cable tying some wires together is necessary to keep everything neat. Also consider how the pickup wires will run to avoid being seen.

Draw it out, and post a photo of it if you want it checked or commented on.

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Attachment 43264 Here is a picture of the diagram that I made. Does everything seem okay?

Yes, that looks fine.

When soldering wires, is it okay to hook the end of a wire in order to stay on the prongs of the pots? Or should I only feed it straight through the hole?

Fine to hook it. It makes it a more sturdy joint but a little harder to take apart if you ever need to unsolder it.

When installing the switch, are there any issues with installing the switch sideways so that it goes left to right, so long as the wires run cleanly to the controls?

Switch orientation is up to you, so no problems. Just work out which way round the switch has to go so that forwards selects the neck pickup and back selects the bridge pickup (presuming that's how you'd like it). Depending on the resulting switch orientation, you may need slightly longer wires to it one way rather than the other way.

I may have said this before, but unlike on a 335-style, with a full hollow body guitar like the ES-1, you can make up the full harness including the pickups, outside the guitar. I fed mine in through the neck pickup hole. You just have to feed the bridge pickup through the hole and then back out through the bridge pickup hole, which is a bit easier to do if you fit the pickup ring afterwards.

Attachment 43266 This is the wiring that I came up with. Pickups work well when tapping with a screw driver. The bridge tone pot is a bit off, meaning there’s only a great change in tone when going towards either extreme (1-2 and 8-10). But this is probably because of the pots not being top of the line, which I don’t mind at all since this is my first build and I just want a working guitar that plays nicely haha.

I’m going to use tiny zip ties to hide the wires from the F-holes.

I'd just use tape myself. The plastic on zip ties is quite hard and can make knocking sounds if it vibrates against the wood. If you use them, use them in places where the wires can't move much, or else use them in conjunction with a self-adhesive pad the tie goes through.

The tone pots in the kit have a liner taper. This is one reason why the tone roll-off is all towards the bottom end of travel. Some people like that, I don't so I fit audio taper pots on volume and tone. Volume pots should really be audio taper (though if you always play with lots of distortion you may prefer linear pots as the sound will clean up quicker if you turn the volume down). Tone pots are a personal choice. I now always use 250k audio pots for tone regardless of whether fitted to single coils or or humbuckers as you do get things happening a lot quicker. Still not a lot between 10 and 8, but you can definitely get a lot more going on below 8, though there's still normally a final sudden tone roll-off below 2. But that's too muddy a tone for me anyway, so if I do use the tone control, it's all in a wide and controllable portion of the pot travel.

Using 250k pots on tone for humbuckers does knock a very tiny bit of the treble off compared to 500k pots, but it's a very small amount indeed to my ears anyway). I tend to pick fairly bright sounding humbuckers, so it's not an issue for me.

The tone pot is a variable resistor, which simply limits the amount of output signal flowing through the tone capacitor. The tone capacitor makes a low-pass filter in conjunction with the pickup coil's impedance (not the tone pot resistance). So a 500k pot will stop more signal flowing through the capacitor than a 250k pot at full resistance. But the actual difference in the guitar output tone between 500k and 250k resistance is really very small indeed, and I really can't hear it.

But if you note that 250k pot on '10' is the tone on '5' setting for a 500k linear taper pot, you should see why using a 250k pot gives you far more controllable range (basically the useable range is doubled). An audio pot further shifts the tone action further up the pot's travel compared to a linear pot, so the tone on a liner pot set around 3, should be the tone with an audio pot set on 5.

All this is personal preference. There is no right or wrong way, but 250k and log/audio taper pots work for me on tone.