BYO Guitar Semi-Hollow: The Impatience Build

[Joe Garfield]

I have an idea for stain but it will be a surprise. I’m now 50/50 stain vs natural.

[Joe Garfield]

I don’t know what to say about this. My OCD gets in the way a lot - what gauge wires to use and where, what needs to be shielded, ground loops vs open ended shielding...and heat shrink color
It’s not in the rubbish bin so that’s a good sign. The 4pdt was tedious. I wouldn’t do this layout again. It would be good to finish a guitar and test this out before building a second harness, to see how it works, if it’s noisy, etc.

One mistak is the switches are wired upside down. I didn’t think about the switch contacts being opposite the lever. I can live with that, for now.

I think I’ll make a breadboard wiring jig for the next guitar and test things out before deciding on a schematic. Or maybe I’ll just skip all the fancy BS I’ll probably never use and wire it like a normal human being.

I used shielded wire for all signal wires wherever possible. The shield is tied to ground at one end only. As such, there is also a non-shielded ground wire. Everything is basically grounded as a chain so there are no loops.

[jugglindan]

Looks quite neat, well done on that front.

Given the difficulty of installing, it would be good to test before installing in the guitar.

[Joe Garfield]

Thanks!

Yeah, I was planning on something like that. I just got my first PGB yesterday and am going to switch focus to that. I was thinking I can just test this harness externally on that guitar when it’s ready. (I’ve got 4-wire pups for that guitar.)

I’m really going all out, lol. I ordered a set of Bare Knuckle Pickups Stormy Monday pups for this guitar.

[Simon Barden]

Just plug the harness in and test the pickups and switch positions by giving them a tap with a small screwdriver. Just knowing you get a sound from all the positions is a good start. If some positions give nothing, then you've got some fault-finding to do.

[Simon Barden]

Are you putting connection blocks in the pickup routs, as you seem to have got some multicore Belden cable already running to the switches?

[Joe Garfield]

Are you putting connection blocks in the pickup routs, as you seem to have got some multicore Belden cable already running to the switches?

That was a consideration, so I could try different pups. At the very least I didn’t want to have to unsolder wires are the pots and switches, so even if I cut back the grey cable I’ll still have a connection point away from the switches. The plan was to decide that after I externally test the electronics and see how I like the sound.

Great suggestion to use the screwdriver, by the way. Thank you.

[Simon Barden]

It's just that you can't install the pickups if they are already wired to the pots. The centre block gets in the way, so you'll have to disconnect them first if they are wired up.