Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is?

K

kevindruhan

New member
Hi everybody,

I had a bad pot in my Gibson Les Paul Standard so while replacing it, I thought I'd take the opportunity to rewire the guitar to a 50's style wiring scheme from the current stock 'modern' wiring scheme. I took the trebly, harsh Burstbuckers out a long time ago and put a SD Custom '59N in the neck and a SD Custom Custom in the bridge.

I grabbed this schematic off the Seymour Duncan website and wired it up, but realized afterwards that this is not 50's style wiring schema at all...in fact I have no idea what kind of wiring scheme it is! The tone caps are soldered from the tone pot to the back of the same tone pot, unlike most LP wiring schemes I've seen where the cap is strung between the volume and tone pots. This seems to be the wiring scheme that Epiphone uses on their LP's, but I have no idea how it differs from the 'Modern Gibson LP' wiring.

Both pickups function and the volume and tone pots work as expected (although most of the action now happens between 8 and 10 on the volume pot, whereas before it was more like between 6 and 10), but overall I think that the pickups seem to have a bit lower output and perhaps some of the highs have been lost as they seem darker...I can't really tell for sure though as it's been a while since I played that guitar.

Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is? Should I put the guitar back to stock?

If anyone has a detailed Seymour Duncan LP 50's wiring diagram showing the detailed wiring to the switch and the output jack, please post it here!

Thanks so much,
Kev

104_Diag_1.png
 
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Re: Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is?

Everything is the same except where you cap.

wiring50s.jpg
 
Re: Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is?

Do you mean that everything I already did is exactly the same as 50's wiring, all I need to do is move where I put the cap?
 
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Re: Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is?

Awesome...I'll try to figure it out, but what would be ideal is a schematic showing every wire like the one in my original post :) I had already found the simplified one above and wasn't sure about a few things.

Thanks so much!
Kev
 
Re: Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is?

This help ya?

7083654_orig.jpg
 
Re: Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is?

Lel at the ground style.
 
Re: Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is?

Kevin,
The diagram you posted is called Modern tone with dependent volumes. The diagrams Ayrton posted are called: 50's (or Vintage) tone, with dependent volumes.
If you want 50's tone with independent volumes just reverse the connections on the vol pot. In other words...input from the pup goes to the middle lug on the vol pot, output to switch and to tone pot connect to the first lug on the vol pot.

As far as the cap goes, it doesn't matter whether you have the cap between the vol pot and the tone pot and ground the middle lug of the tone pot; or whether you have a wire from the vol pot to the tone pot and run the cap from the middle lug of the tone pot to ground.
 
Re: Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is?

In the latest diagram from Ayrton, it names 2 different special (I assume aesthetic) locations of the pot grounding wires which was funny to me.
 
Re: Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is?

Never underestimate the vintage nerds.
 
Re: Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is?

Clint 55 said:
In the latest diagram from Ayrton, it names 2 different special (I assume aesthetic) locations of the pot grounding wires which was funny to me.
Click to expand...

I thought the vintage one had no grounding wire going to the bridge vol pot...
 
Re: Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is?

cvt01 said:
I thought the vintage one had no grounding wire going to the bridge vol pot...
Click to expand...

There is supposed to be one, but considering some of the work I have seen, depends on how drunk the worker was.

FUJI-Ramm-KOSS-054-1.jpg
 
Re: Is anyone here familiar with this wiring scheme and can you tell me what it is?

Jeff,
Actually that's dependent volumes.

Here are the "rules" for dependent vs independent volumes (viewing the vol pot from the back with the lugs facing down, the lug to the right is lug #3 and is grounded):
If the output to the switch/jack is from the first lug, then you have independent volumes (lug #2, or the middle lug, is the input from the pup);
If the output to the switch/jack is lug #2 (middle), you have dependent volumes (lug #1 is the input from the pup).

Here are the rules for 50's/Vintage tone vs Modern tone:
If the volume pot's input lug is wired to the tone pot, you have Modern tone,
If the volume pot's output lug is wired to the tone pot you have 50's/Vintage tone.
(Keep in mind that the input and output lugs of the volume pot are not set lugs, but vary between lug #1 and lug #2 according to the chosen wiring scheme...dependent or independent).
 
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