Another 50s wiring question

[scole]

Hey everyone,

I have a set of Seth Lover pickups on the way and I'm looking to install them into a semi-hollow guitar (Ibanez AWD-83T). I'm hoping to implement 50s wiring for the setup and I have found a wiring diagram for my general situation (2 hum / 1 vol / 1 tone):

The problem I'm having is with the tone capacitor. Normally, it bridges across from the volume to the tone pot but this isn't possible with the guitar I'm going to install this into. As you can see, the volume pot (nearest the bridge) is quite a ways away from the tone pot and also separated by the f-hole:

So how do you adapt to this situation? Do I connect one end of the capacitor to the volume pot as you would normally and then solder a patch wire to the other end of the capacitor and run that to the appropriate post on the tone pot? Adding to my confusion, I think I've seen some explanations where the capacitor doesn't need to bridge between the volume & tone pot- the capacitor gets connected to one of the tone pot posts and then the other end of the capacitor is soldered to the housing of the tone pot (ground). Is that the solution for my situation?

Thanks!
Steve

 

[v8stang289]

To do the 50's wiring I think you'll have to run a patch wire like you're talking about.
You can definitely wire it up where the cap goes from that lower leg to the body of the tone pot, but it won't be 50's style from my understanding and you'll have to change some of the other wiring as well.

 

[beaubrummels]

Wire the cap from the middle lug of the tone to the back of the tone pot/ground. Be sure to put insulation on the cap legs so it doesn't short out prematurely. Then just run a jumper wire whatever length you need to avoid the f-hole from the middle lug of the volume over to the outside lug of the tone pot.

 

[scole]

Hey, thanks guys for the response. The guitar came today so I was able to look inside the f-hole and see how it's currently wired. I tried applying that generic wiring diagram I originally posted and apply it to this guitar along with the talk here about jumping the capacitor. Here's what I came up with. Hopefully this isn't confusing. I wanted it to be efficient but I couldn't wire "forward because it would be see along the bottom of the inner chamber in front of the tone pot.

 

[WDeeGee]

Looks good!

 

[scole]

Tying up a loose end and posting a final update since I completed this project this weekend (my new soldering iron broke and other life delays). Once I had this wiring diagram drawn up, I built a small jig for it out of some 1/4" plywood I had handy. I also realized that I'd probably have better luck with this work if I made the wiring diagram match the layout of my jig so I didn't wire it up in a way that it wouldn't physically fit back in the guitar. I flipped the diagram horizontal so here's what that looks like:

Everything was removed & replaced except for the bridge ground. The CTS pots have a wider diameter than the original pots so I used a manual reamer to enlarge the volume/tone pot holes. I just picked one up at Harbor Freight for $3.25 and just cut off the first inch or so of the tip since this is a semi-hollow with not a lot of depth to accomodate the reamer as it works. I just went slow and performed many short rotations to get the right fit with minimal damage. Here's the reamer at work with my Seth Lovers already installed:



Once I knew every component fit, I worked on the wiring harness. It was daunting before I got started but wasn't too bad in the end. I did make a couple mistakes and would change things slightly. Here's the jig with the harness after I wired in the Seth Lovers:

As you can see, I did use a jumper wire from the volume to the tone pot. In hindsight, the only thing I would change is reversing this wiring so that the capacitor was physically at the tone pot instead of at the volume pot. This is where Ibanez placed their tone capacitor originally and it makes sense since there's so much room there at the tone pot. I realized how tight things would be near the volume pot as I was trying to put this into the guitar. Around this location is where the two humbucker wires and bridge wire enter the bottom hollow cavity area.

With the controls and pickups connected (but still outside the body), I connected the guitar to an amp to test things out.Nothing. I get some grounding buzz occasionally but definitely no output from the pickups. This frustrated and stymied me for a while. I eventually discovered that the output wire from the volume pot was somehow grounding itself out on the volume pot as it left the post. Not sure exactly why but I guess I should have clipped back some extra outer braid strands. Once I tweaked that, I finally got volume out of the pickups and all seemed well.

I removed everything from the jig and put it into the guitar, once I had it all in, I tested everything again. A new set of problems- I only had output from the neck pickup and the volume pot wouldn't go to full silence and it operated backwards. Ugh.

I pulled the volume and 3-way switch back out to troubleshoot. As it turned out, my job of grounding the volume pot post to the volume pot body wasn't good. In my frustration of trying to figure out why I wasn't getting any output originally, I ended up soldering a small jumper wire between the pot body & post. I removed this, did a better job, and the volume pot finally went to full silence. The reverse pot operation was also an easy fix was you realize what's going on. Again, I tried so many things trying to debug the zero output that I reversed the wiring of the volume (as shown in the photo above). Swapping it back fixed the issue.

The last thing to fix was the lack of bridge pickup output. Once again, I eventually realized that the incoming pickup wire braiding was somehow grounding out the signal. I cut down the wire to be soldered, cut back the braid more, and slipped on some heat shrink tubing to remedy that. Pretty happy with the finished product and really happy I didn't have to pay a shop to do the work. I'm loving the sound of the Seth Lover set so far.

Cheers.
Steve

 

[JamesPaul]

Nice! Looks like you learned some cool stuff for your next semi-hollow project. I let my shop put the Seth's in my Dot, but then the output jack needed replaced so I ended up sorting out how to do that. That jig looks pro!

 

[scole]

Hah, thanks! Not going to lie- this project had me real frustrated at times but I'm happy I was able to push through and get it done. Also, I got to spend the money I saved on shop labor on other guitar gear.