Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

V1ntage

V1ntage

New member
I'm looking to build my own guitar for a big school product, i've been fiddling about with a DIY strat kit and should soon have wired in and attached the pickboard back on with a cheap 2nd hand humbucker for the neck and 2 single coils for the middle and bridge. I'm looking to wire it the same as the red special but with a tone knob for each pickup and if its too tricky or takes up too much space I won't use phase selectors only the individual pickup selectors, trouble is I know little of wiring and haven't done much before, I don't think what i'm making has been done before so I can't find any diagrams and i'm finding it tricky to know what should go where, i've included 2 images of my rough diagram for what I want. One without phase switches, any advice on what to do and how to do it would help, i'm not even sure how phase switches work or if this would be possible. Any advice, tutorials or diagrams would be appreciated
electrics diagram with phase switches.jpg
electrics diagram.jpg
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

V1ntage said:
I'm looking to build my own guitar for a big school product, i've been fiddling about with a DIY strat kit and should soon have wired in and attached the pickboard back on with a cheap 2nd hand humbucker for the neck and 2 single coils for the middle and bridge. I'm looking to wire it the same as the red special but with a tone knob for each pickup and if its too tricky or takes up too much space I won't use phase selectors only the individual pickup selectors, trouble is I know little of wiring and haven't done much before, I don't think what i'm making has been done before so I can't find any diagrams and i'm finding it tricky to know what should go where, i've included 2 images of my rough diagram for what I want. One without phase switches, any advice on what to do and how to do it would help, i'm not even sure how phase switches work or if this would be possible. Any advice, tutorials or diagrams would be appreciated
View attachment 76554
View attachment 76555
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I'm building a partscaster as well, but with one humbucker and one volume knob. Why not start with sometjing more simple? Haha, I'm kidding. Hmm... the more experienced guys on this forum should be able to provide some insight. :headbang:
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

Welcome to the forum!

We have some really great wiring people here, so they should be along shortly to help out.
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

The diagram is practically the red special one. You just need to wire up 3 tone pots (the same way the BMRS is done) and attach them directly to the lug one of the pickup wires is attached to on the pickup selector switch...one for each as you want.
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

Welcome to the forum

If it's a school project, when is the deadline?

I would pick an easier wiring scheme for my first time out.
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

Aha yeah everyone's saying that, but i wanna go all out or not out at all xD Hopefully it works at least
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

Sometime in novemeber and yeah doing something easier would be....well easier but I intend to keep it afterwards of course and I'd love to have one that has what I want in it
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

Ah good, yeah im basing it off the red special but personalizing it a lot, cheers :)
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

Fonzie said:
I'm building a partscaster as well, but with one humbucker and one volume knob. Why not start with sometjing more simple? Haha, I'm kidding. Hmm... the more experienced guys on this forum should be able to provide some insight. :headbang:
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Yeah I was hoping for help, the woodwork will probably be tricky too but not as much as the wiring and the pickups are the most important part of the sound in my opinion :)
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

V1ntage said:
Yeah I was hoping for help, the woodwork will probably be tricky too but not as much as the wiring and the pickups are the most important part of the sound in my opinion :)
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You have to carve the body yourself? Man.
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

The woodwork is going to be harder than the wiring man, haha. I wish you luck my friend
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

Fonzie said:
The woodwork is going to be harder than the wiring man, haha. I wish you luck my friend
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It might be yeah but I've done wood work before whereas the only wiring i've done was in primary school with lightbulbs and batteries, I'm more worried about if the wiring works, crafting my own body may just be cutting away at a les paul or strat body if I spend too long on the wiring and thanks man I need it :)
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

V1ntage said:
It might be yeah but I've done wood work before whereas the only wiring i've done was in primary school with lightbulbs and batteries, I'm more worried about if the wiring works, crafting my own body may just be cutting away at a les paul or strat body if I spend too long on the wiring and thanks man I need it :)
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Well it's good you have experience. I will say, the trickiest part about the wiring is getting good solder joints.
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

There should be net tutorials if the teachers can't provide it. Practicing on some random components is a good way to get used to the mechanics.

You'll need a powerful/high wattage iron as the connections on the back of pots need some seriously quick heat to make the local area for the join hot without that spreading to the delicate internals.
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

AlexR said:
There should be net tutorials if the teachers can't provide it. Practicing on some random components is a good way to get used to the mechanics.

You'll need a powerful/high wattage iron as the connections on the back of pots need some seriously quick heat to make the local area for the join hot without that spreading to the delicate internals.
Click to expand...

I mean, I just picked up a cheap soldering kit at radioshack, seems to have done the job just fine. :)
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

^ If you've done a lot of soldering then you can usually make irons work that the beginner would struggle with. Best off to make it as easy as possible for the first-timer.
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

Fonzie said:
Well it's good you have experience. I will say, the trickiest part about the wiring is getting good solder joints.
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Yeah so far the soldering is just messy, but works, i've fitted a humbucker into a cheap diy strat, going to look to fit in 3 switches and wire up the selector switch to have all of them connected, best way I can think of at the minute to get the individual switches wired up
 
Re: Building my own guitar, with no experience of wiring

AlexR said:
^ If you've done a lot of soldering then you can usually make irons work that the beginner would struggle with. Best off to make it as easy as possible for the first-timer.
Click to expand...

Yeah i've got a diy strat to practice on and deconstruct, hopefully I can get a system working in that before I make my own body and pickguard
 
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