I posted this same thread in ETSG. But, I decided to repost here. I had begun discussing this in another thread, but decided to start a new one, so as not to further derail the other thread....
There comes a time in every man's life when he decides he just wants to change things up for no reason other than he just plain feels like it.
I decided my Jackson needed a change. Nothing was really wrong, but it came with cheapie pots and I've had bad luck with cheapie parts, so I figured I'd preemptively put some new parts in it.
Now, normally I'd order some Bourns pots, but on a whim yesterday afternoon I swung by the local music store to see what they had. Well, they had CTS pots, some capacitors, some knobs, and a whole lot of other things from Allparts. So, I decided to buy some parts and clean things up a bit.
The first thing I realized is that I'd need to enlarge the holes. This Jackson came with cheap mini-pots and I bought full-size, 500K CTS pots. So, I had to drill the holes larger.
This just shows the masking tape prior to drilling. I never cease to be impressed with just how effective masking tape is at preventing splinters...provided you have a nice, sharp drill bit.
I also discovered a little locator lug on the pots. I had to remove this, as there is no matching alignment hole in the guitar. These shots show the lug before and after I cut it off with wire cutters:
Before:
After:
I always like to use a template, as it allows me to do a fair amount of work outside the body of the guitar.
Here are the pots in the template:
Now, here is the thing I really wanted to do. I wanted to create sort of a common ground buss. This has several advantages. It allows me to really clean up the wiring. It also allows me to avoid soldering a bunch of wires to the back of pots. This has the benefit of facilitating future part swaps without having to disturb a bunch of wires that would otherwise all be soldered to the back of the pots.
The buss wire is 18 gauge, silver-plated, solid copper wire. I got it at AC Moore. The silver plating must be some alloy because the packaging stated it was non-tarnishing. That's a plus. It takes solder well, but it helps to pre-tin all the connection points.
This pic also shows the round-nose pliers I used to form all the eyelets in the wire. I also got those at AC Moore, in the jewelry-making section. I can't believe I never bought those before! They're awesome for forming little loops in the wire. Really handy.
By the way, yes, that is a ceramic disc capacitor. It is .022 Mfd. It was cheap and readily available.
I failed to take a "Before" picture of the control cavity before starting this little project. But, I did find an image on my phone of the control cavity. This shot was taken some months ago as I was preparing to replace the pickups. This is just after I desoldered the pickup grounds. But, it gives a good idea of the original. It's a little on the messy side.
Finally, here is the completed cavity. This is a lot less cluttered-looking than before. I may replace the switch at some point, too.
To give an idea of the connections, to the eyelet on the far left are attached the bridge ground and switch ground wires. The buss wire then is soldered to the back of the volume pot. The next two eyelets have the grounds for the neck and bridge pickups, respectively. Next, the buss is soldered to the back of the tone pot. Finally, the last eyelet has the output jack ground connection.
As expected, there is no change to the sound, but I do like it better.
Being that this guitar is my cheap modding platform, sometimes I use it to scratch the tinkering itch.
There comes a time in every man's life when he decides he just wants to change things up for no reason other than he just plain feels like it.
I decided my Jackson needed a change. Nothing was really wrong, but it came with cheapie pots and I've had bad luck with cheapie parts, so I figured I'd preemptively put some new parts in it.
Now, normally I'd order some Bourns pots, but on a whim yesterday afternoon I swung by the local music store to see what they had. Well, they had CTS pots, some capacitors, some knobs, and a whole lot of other things from Allparts. So, I decided to buy some parts and clean things up a bit.
The first thing I realized is that I'd need to enlarge the holes. This Jackson came with cheap mini-pots and I bought full-size, 500K CTS pots. So, I had to drill the holes larger.
This just shows the masking tape prior to drilling. I never cease to be impressed with just how effective masking tape is at preventing splinters...provided you have a nice, sharp drill bit.
I also discovered a little locator lug on the pots. I had to remove this, as there is no matching alignment hole in the guitar. These shots show the lug before and after I cut it off with wire cutters:
Before:
After:
I always like to use a template, as it allows me to do a fair amount of work outside the body of the guitar.
Here are the pots in the template:
Now, here is the thing I really wanted to do. I wanted to create sort of a common ground buss. This has several advantages. It allows me to really clean up the wiring. It also allows me to avoid soldering a bunch of wires to the back of pots. This has the benefit of facilitating future part swaps without having to disturb a bunch of wires that would otherwise all be soldered to the back of the pots.
The buss wire is 18 gauge, silver-plated, solid copper wire. I got it at AC Moore. The silver plating must be some alloy because the packaging stated it was non-tarnishing. That's a plus. It takes solder well, but it helps to pre-tin all the connection points.
This pic also shows the round-nose pliers I used to form all the eyelets in the wire. I also got those at AC Moore, in the jewelry-making section. I can't believe I never bought those before! They're awesome for forming little loops in the wire. Really handy.
By the way, yes, that is a ceramic disc capacitor. It is .022 Mfd. It was cheap and readily available.
I failed to take a "Before" picture of the control cavity before starting this little project. But, I did find an image on my phone of the control cavity. This shot was taken some months ago as I was preparing to replace the pickups. This is just after I desoldered the pickup grounds. But, it gives a good idea of the original. It's a little on the messy side.
Finally, here is the completed cavity. This is a lot less cluttered-looking than before. I may replace the switch at some point, too.
To give an idea of the connections, to the eyelet on the far left are attached the bridge ground and switch ground wires. The buss wire then is soldered to the back of the volume pot. The next two eyelets have the grounds for the neck and bridge pickups, respectively. Next, the buss is soldered to the back of the tone pot. Finally, the last eyelet has the output jack ground connection.
As expected, there is no change to the sound, but I do like it better.
Being that this guitar is my cheap modding platform, sometimes I use it to scratch the tinkering itch.
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ROCK THE FOOK ON
