Can the pickups in this guitar even be changed?

[Napthol]

I saw a Epiphone Les Paul Classic with the back plate removed so I got a look in the cavity, and I saw small circuit boards attached to the pots. I suspected that the reason they were there is because the Les Paul Classic has coil splitting and phase switching.

I love the Heritage Cherry color, but I question whether or not you can even put different pickups in that particular guitar with that circuit board crap.

 

[jeremy]

you sure can change em! you have to match up the correct wire color codes so you know what the epi is vs whatever you are swapping in for starters. you can add connectors to the new pup and the wiring should work just the same. you can split coils and/or switch phase with just normal switching though.

 

[Chris Pile]

You can also rip it all out and start over.

 

[Rex_Rocker]

Yep. My Gibson came with the PCB system as well. All you have to do is cut the terminals off the old pickups, figure out what each color does on those terminals, and then connect the corresponding wires from the aftermarket pickups.

Or just get new pots and swap everything out.

 

[Mincer]

I don't get rid of pots that work well, so I say look online for the terminals and splice them to the correct wires of the pickups (you might have to do a little research- wire colors are not standard). As long as whatever pickups you choose have the 'tails' on right, it will all work. For fun, have several sets and swap them out at will.

 

[Rex_Rocker]

You can also buy the terminals with the correct color codes of ebay for cheap and just splice those cables up yourself so that you can sell the stock pickups with the terminals intact.

 

[80's_Thrash_Metal]

I've swapped a few of those out, I used the ebay quick connectors for pretty cheap. I've got a picture of how to wire it ...somewhere....

 

[Mincer]

You can also buy the terminals with the correct color codes of ebay for cheap and just splice those cables up yourself so that you can sell the stock pickups with the terminals intact.

Yeah, this is the way to do it. The quick connect system is actually pretty good if were adopted more.

 

[Rex_Rocker]

Yeah, it's actually easier than doing the whole pickup swap with soldering to the pots and whatnot. Splicing up the cables, I mean.

I didn't know they sold the terminals off ebay when I tried it on my Gibson, and those have different color codes than my Epi did. So I ended up swapping a DiMarzio Evolution Neck with a Gibson 500T in there that either had a ground loop or was out of phase with each other. But in the end, I figured it out.