Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

[Kais]

Hey all,

I want to wire my explorer to have more tonal possibilities. I myself am not familiar enough with wiring to do this job, and the local guitar tech is also not comfortable. I called up guitar center and they quoted me $145 for this job.

Master Volume, Master Tone, and the third a Spin a split for the neck pickup, push pulls on all three pots, one as a series/parallel for the Bridge, one to throw the pickups outta phase with each other, and the last one as a master kill switch.

What do you all think, is that a fair price or should I possibly try to do myself?

 

[Funkfingers]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

First question is, what pickups are currently in the guitar?

Second question is, how long is the output cable on each?

On a typical Explorer, there is a long cable run between the pots and the selector switch. With a VVT control set up, the pickup cables connect to the pots. A separate set of three cables runs to and from the selector switch.

For your circuit, there is a fair bit of rejigging of the stock cabling plus the DPDT connections to be made on the push-pull pots.

Some of the price that you have been quoted is for parts. Most of it is for time/labour. This may explain why your "non-confidant" Guitar Center non-tech needs so much time to complete the job. A confident, experienced, knowledgeable repairer asking that sum of money would be another matter. It is the knowledge and experience for which you are really paying.

If you break the task down into manageable stages, you should be able to complete the modifications yourself.

 

[Kais]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

First question is, what pickups are currently in the guitar?

Second question is, how long is the output cable on each?

On a typical Explorer, there is a long cable run between the pots and the selector switch. With a VVT control set up, the pickup cables connect to the pots. A separate set of three cables runs to and from the selector switch.

For your circuit, there is a fair bit of rejigging of the stock cabling plus the DPDT connections to be made on the push-pull pots.

Some of the price that you have been quoted is for parts. Most of it is for time/labour. This may explain why your "non-confidant" Guitar Center non-tech needs so much time to complete the job. A confident, experienced, knowledgeable repairer asking that sum of money would be another matter. It is the knowledge and experience for which you are really paying.

If you break the task down into manageable stages, you should be able to complete the modifications yourself.

I currently have a pearly gates neck and custom custom bridge installed. The leads are roughly as long as they are stock. Yes your absolutely right about the selector switch, I had to replace mine a while ago. I've never wired anything besides the standard series setup. I suppose it would be better if guitar center messed up, then I know I'll be reimbursed vs the at home tech, haha.

 

[Snoogles]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

in my experience spin-splits are not effective

i have a guitar with 2 vols, 1 tone

the 2 volume pots are push pull, that split each humbucker individually. one splits to the north coil. one splits to the south coil.

then the tone pot is also a push-pull that switches between series/parallel when both pickups are selected. its not a series/parallel for individual pickups.

 

[Kais]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

in my experience spin-splits are not effective

i have a guitar with 2 vols, 1 tone

the 2 volume pots are push pull, that split each humbucker individually. one splits to the north coil. one splits to the south coil.

then the tone pot is also a push-pull that switches between series/parallel when both pickups are selected. its not a series/parallel for individual pickups.

Thanks for the tips. I'm thinking to put push pulls on all 3, the first to switch between series/parallel second to put out of phase and third to split both pups. I'm gonna forget the whole kill switch idea for now, I could use the volume and pickup selector for that

 

[epi]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

not guitar center, no no no no no. just from what I hear I would never buy or get anything done there.

 

[Myaccount876]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

That price is ridiculous. If your tech just needs a wiring diagram, I can get you one fairly quickly. What you want is very possible without any wiring conflicts, just the issue is finding someone to do it. I personally do all wiring my jobs myself, even doing a few jobs for others, but if you're not comfortable, get a tech who is comfortable.

 

[orpheo]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

$145 for a fairly elaborate wiring scheme but not overly complex? I don't know. I guess it would take me 3 hours all in. I charge $30 an hour so that would be $90. But a big store is often more expensive.

I am cheaper, but I get the jist of things. 145 may not be that excessive for a good, qualified tech with 20+years of experience under his or her belt.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

I think the price is fair.

But if it was my guitar I wouldn't do it.

I'd leave the guitar as is.

These days, it seems like I get more work removing fancy wiring and replacing push/pull pots with stock pots than I do putting them in.

I truly believe simpler is better.

But, of course, like most things everyone has to decide that for their self.

 

[Kais]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

$145 for a fairly elaborate wiring scheme but not overly complex? I don't know. I guess it would take me 3 hours all in. I charge $30 an hour so that would be $90. But a big store is often more expensive.

I am cheaper, but I get the jist of things. 145 may not be that excessive for a good, qualified tech with 20+years of experience under his or her belt.

I should clarify a bit. He was charging $100 for time and labor alone. The additional $45 was for the 3 push pulls and tax. So that's fairly close to your estimate.

He's not going to start the job until Tuesday. I'm just thinking if I made the right decision on the 3 pull options. 1. Series/parallel for both pups 2. Out of phase 3. Split each pup, hopefully the inner coils. Anyone have thoughts?

 

[Kais]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

That price is ridiculous. If your tech just needs a wiring diagram, I can get you one fairly quickly. What you want is very possible without any wiring conflicts, just the issue is finding someone to do it. I personally do all wiring my jobs myself, even doing a few jobs for others, but if you're not comfortable, get a tech who is comfortable.

What do you think would be a fair price? My local tech referred me to someone that would do this out of his house, and his quote was only $20 cheaper. At least with GC if they **** it up they will make it right somehow, vs the local who could do the job or could do the opposite. The GC tech is highly regarded, even by my main tech haha.

 

[Myaccount876]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

What do you think would be a fair price? My local tech referred me to someone that would do this out of his house, and his quote was only $20 cheaper. At least with GC if they **** it up they will make it right somehow, vs the local who could do the job or could do the opposite. The GC tech is highly regarded, even by my main tech haha.

I charge $80 flat for any wiring (unless it is stupid simple, like 1 humbucker/1 volume or something similar, then I just make it $40), plus the cost of any additional parts. $45 for 3 push/pulls sounds like a little bit much, and you could probably save a buck by ordering them online for ~$8/each rather than ~$15/each and supply them yourself. It isn't really an issue of quality vs. price either. Most push/pulls come from the same place regardless of the name, just companies will label them as their own brand with a certain quality control. Push/pulls are inherently more prone to failure compared to regular potentiometers, so it really doesn't matter where you get push/pulls from.

For the tech working out of their home - that isn't really any issue. You have to be fairly confident in your trade to let customers come to your house. It becomes fairly personal then, and should be incentive to do a really good job. When you're independent like that, you better take excellent care of your customers, or you won't be in business for long at all. A GC will be in business whether you are satisfied or not with a repair. If they mess up, "Whoops, sorry about that! Your total will be $145!". Any independent tech worth his salt will take any loss that is their fault.

But if the GC tech is highly regarded - and I suggest you always get multiple unbiased opinions of any particular GC tech - and you're comfortable with them doing the work, go for it.

 

[Low_fidelity2100]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

I think the price is fair.

But if it was my guitar I wouldn't do it.

I'd leave the guitar as is.

These days, it seems like I get more work removing fancy wiring and replacing push/pull pots with stock pots than I do putting them in.

I truly believe simpler is better.

But, of course, like most things everyone has to decide that for their self.

I think the price is a Bit high, but agree with everything else completely.

I've done plenty of weird wiring schemes myself in the past, and really ended up only using one or two settings. I find it's better to just let a guitar be what it is, and use it for what it's good at. Trying to make it something it's not is always a compromise, and will always sound/feel like a compromise. A split bucker doesn't sound or feel the same as a real single coil does.

I'd say let the explorer be an explorer, and get something else if you need Single coil tones. Or if you're looking for something that you can't do with the explorer as is, might be better to simply sell it, and buy something that does do what you want. Cause when it really comes down to it, if you're not satisfied with a guitar doing what it's meant to do, then chances are pretty good you won't be satisfied with it doing a bunch of stuff it wasn't designed to do.

 

[Funkfingers]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

At least with GC if they **** it up they will make it right somehow.

With respect, any guitar tech who gets this job wrong the first time has disqualified him or herself from taking a second attempt at it.

 

[Kais]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

Very true points by all. My point was to keep myself covered, a tech should be comfortable when accepting a job, but like I also said both the tech and GC quotes were fairly close.

Of course a split bucker doesn't sound like a single coil, but then again a single coil doesn't sound like a split bucker. And since the pups have the capability to be split, might as we'll take advantage of that. But my mods will not affect its ability to be an explorer and to get the humbucker tones it gets now.

 

[Kais]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

Just an update. Got the guitar back from the gc tech. Pot 1 splits the neck humb, pot 2 splits the bridge humb, and pot 3 is a master series/parallel. There is a bit of bleed thru on pot 1 when the bridge pup is activated. But other than that, everything is cool. Thanks again for all the tips.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

in my experience spin-splits are not effective.

I totally disagree. Spin-a-splits are great for neck HB's. Not only do they give coil cut, but you can dial any amount of unbalanced coils you want, for that 1950's PAF sound. Very versatile.

If you have coil cut on your bridge HB, you can wire it so that you get the screw coil of one (bridge coil cut) and the slug coil of the other (neck spin-a-split) so you get HB/hum cancelling in the middle toggle position, which creates a 'virtual HB' (like a Strat in positions 2 and 4).

I'd also wire for independent volume controls, so you can blend the PU's in many increments. Between that and the blends of spin-a-split, you have all kinds of tones, without even using a push-pull.

 

[Kais]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

I totally disagree. Spin-a-splits are great for neck HB's. Not only do they give coil cut, but you can dial any amount of unbalanced coils you want, for that 1950's PAF sound. Very versatile.

If you have coil cut on your bridge HB, you can wire it so that you get the screw coil of one (bridge coil cut) and the slug coil of the other (neck spin-a-split) so you get HB/hum cancelling in the middle toggle position, which creates a 'virtual HB' (like a Strat in positions 2 and 4).

I'd also wire for independent volume controls, so you can blend the PU's in many increments. Between that and the blends of spin-a-split, you have all kinds of tones, without even using a push-pull.

Good tip. Well the explorer does have independent volume controls already.

But my favorite position so far has been the pearly gate neck split in parallel. It's a much brighter tone than just a full humbucker in series. That pup going into my dirt pedals, I can retain some more clarity than I couldn't before.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

Is this going to be done without routing? I think an Explorer has some space under the pickguard. However, if you put miniswitches there you will hit them when playing.

Overall I'd go full throttle with the options like your original plan. Splitting alone isn't very exciting, and neither is out-of-phase.

However, if you combine both OOP and in-series, that's where things get interesting. Especially if you can split so that you can "subtract" (via OOP) half a neck pickup from the bridge pickup while the additional coil is in series.

 

[Kais]

Re: Fancy Wiring Advice for an Explorer

Is this going to be done without routing? I think an Explorer has some space under the pickguard. However, if you put miniswitches there you will hit them when playing.

Overall I'd go full throttle with the options like your original plan. Splitting alone isn't very exciting, and neither is out-of-phase.

However, if you combine both OOP and in-series, that's where things get interesting. Especially if you can split so that you can "subtract" (via OOP) half a neck pickup from the bridge pickup while the additional coil is in series.

No routing necessary, there's enough space in the explorer already. I slightly disagree, splitting is very exciting! At least for me it is, maybe because this is the fanciest wiring I have setup in a guitar?

OOP sounds interesting, but I suppose my main goal for the explorer was to thin the tone a bit. With the pups I had, and the wood, it was a very thick and dark sounding guitar. I can still get those same thick and dark sounds, but now I have the options to make the tone bright and thin. Not to mention I had the stock pots, so new pots were a noticeable upgrade too.