Another guitar rebuild, this time with electronics
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| 🐦🔥 (or maybe 凤凰?) |
This project took longer than I thought it would, both because not everything was delivered with Amazon speed (the pickups and other electronics took ~7 days to arrive), and because this was my first time doing an electronics project like this.
Tuners & Bridge and other Hardware
The stock “ESP” branded tuners were fine, but I’ve gotten spoiled with locking tuners on other guitars (string changes are so easy!), and I want to see what I can do with cheap parts, so ... Guyker Guitar Locking Tuners (as low as $39 depending on the colorway; I went with black, for $43). I measured carefully with a caliper before pulling the trigger. They are exact drop-in replacements, at least in terms of mounting holes etc. (they’re ever so slightly shorter, so the tuning head sits a little closer to the head stock, but not enough to matter). Huzzah. I reused the screws that held in the stock tuners, no new holes. So far they seem high quality, they’re 18:1 ratio just like the Hipshots I love (every 18 turns of the knob turns the post once; 18:1 is a good balance between precise (20:1+) and sloppy (12:1-15:1), and reasonable speed for pitch changes and string changes. Since I’ll be spinning this down to Drop D often... These tuners had 4.6 stars across 2,101 reviews.
[pictures]
The bridge was showing some pitting and corrosion, and with black tuners I kinda wanted to go with black (instead of black nickel) hardware elsewhere. I’m not going to change the ferrules on this string-through-body guitar (no tailpiece), so that just meant changing the bridge itself. For $22 you can get the Guyker GM005 with roller saddles (which, fair warning, raise the height by maybe 1-2 mm). It’s a drop-in replacement for “import” guitars. I left the original anchors in place but used the new bridge posts and of course the bridge itself. It seems high quality so far (I mean, it’s no Babicz, but what is?). One nice touch my more expensive Gotoh bridge lacks: Set screws at each post hole, to “lock” the bridge in place when the strings aren’t holding it down. It has 4.6 stars averaged across 975 reviews.
The pickup rings are plastic and in okay condition, but in for a penny, in for a pound, right? $15 for another set of Guyker flat metal humbucker pickup rings, and I reused pieces from the guitar screw set I picked up when I was rebuilding the EC-300. Specifically, I used the Humbucker Pickup 3#-48 x26.7 sets (includes springs) and the Pickup Ring screws (2.5x18).
Finally, this is an ESP product, although part of their entry level LTD lineup. The original pickups say “ESP” on them, as did the original tuners. The back of the neck says “ESP” prominently. Some other LTD models have historically said ESP on the truss rod cover, including my early-2000s EC-300 (they started moving away from this practice around 2008; this is a 2009). Since I was removing most of the other ESP branding it originally came with, and since the truss rod cover was looking a little beat up, I splurged on a vanity truss rod cover with the ESP logo. (The other option I was considering was one inscribed with 中国で安価に製造 but there was concern as to whether or not those fine characters could
be engraved on that small a surface; I may get it as a decal? I think it
sums up the spirit of this guitar, and the components, although “cheap”
is relative; this is a generally pretty well made instrument.)
Electronics
This will be my first time replacing pickups / wiring a guitar. I spent some time researching options and almost went with FLEOR, but I decided to chase what I hear is much higher consistency with equipment from GuitarFetish. Specifically:
- Alnico Fat Pat Boutique Humbucker, Black - Kwikplug - Neck Position - 10K ($31)
- Vintage Extra Hot - The BROWN SOUND, Black - Kwikplug - Bridge Position - 11.2K ($37)
- Full Sized A500K Volume Pot ($2.50)
PUSH-PUSH 500K Pot for Coil Tapping (technically, coil splitting...) ($12)Didn’t fit; ended up with a Banworks JT/XNQ-24 Aluminum A500K M8 Thread Push Pull Guitar Pot ($10)- Ceramic Disk Tone Cap- .022uf ($2)
- Some wire
- XGP Flat Black Cavity Shielding Paint (snake oil? As long as I’m in there...) ($9)
- Switchcraft jack ($7)
- Debated a new switch, decided against it for now.
- Debating new pot knobs to match the newly installed hardware...
Strings
D’Addario NYXL1046 10-46 Regular Light, NYXL Electric Guitar Strings, obvi. I’d love to get these on Amazon (convenience), but counterfits are a problem there. I’d normally just pick some up at Guitar Center but when I don’t drop by regularly, I just get them directly from the manufacturer. Same price and free shipping for orders over $50.
Installation
Now I need to pore over the several wiring diagrams (e.g., universal; two humbuckers), etc., to hook all of this stuff up correctly, with 60/40 solder and my trusty Hakko FX-888D.
Miscellaneous Parts and Tools
Additional stuff I had handy and used for this project:
- Helping Hand with magnifying glass - I’m not wild about this thing, it’s not very stable, but it’s what I had and it beat not having anything. I’d look for a better, more robust unit.
- Heat gun and heat shrink tubing
- Quick disconnect connectors; these aren’t ideal for this (the wires are too small, generally), but it’s what I had on hand. In the future I might use something like a plugable screw terminal block (I used these to leave hard to remove wiring, i.e. to the bridge ground, and to the side-mounted 1/4" jack, in the guitar while allowing me to build the rest of the wiring installation outside of the guitar with room to get around).
- 22 AWG stranded hookup wires
- A Dremel and one of the wire wheels that came with it, to scratch up the back of the volume pot enough to let solder adhere to it easily
- Heat insulating solder mat
- Solder sucker (don’t get the cheap ones, they suck)
- Fluke 107 multimeter, currently < $100 on Amazon and that’s a steal. It’s also worth having some alligator leads.
- Good, easy to use and read, digital caliper; I have this one and it’s great.
- Magnifying lens with a built-in ring light (I have one similar to this)
Putting everything together
Hardware
I did the hardware first. Less than an hour to replace the tuners and the bridge / poles. Everything dropped right in.
Electronics
Next, I set the guitar up so I could do the wiring outside of the control cavity, which is a tight space to work in. The MH-100 has a single black wire disappearing into the body that my multimeter tells me was connected to the bridge as a ground, and a 1/4" instrument jack mounted into the side of the guitar. I replaced that jack with a Switchcraft, which feels a lot more solid, and ran a black (shield) and red (tip) 22 AWG insulated wire from my kit into the guitar body. (I twisted them together and then locked those twists in place with heat shrink tubing; not sure if it’ll have any signal advantages, but at least it’s tidy.) Both the bridge ground and the jack wiring got quick disconnect connectors, as those are the only parts that cannot easily be removed from the guitar. (The pickups are using the GuitarFetish KwikPlug™ system (YouTube look), which use cables that terminate in 2.5 mm TRRS plugs; tip (red lead) is the hot/positive signal, white (ring 1) is the coil split lead (goes to ground to split to a single coil), black (negative/ground return path, ring 2), and bare/silver (copper) (shield), overall system ground). Those 2.5 mm connectors slip easily through the channels built into the guitar for the bridge and neck pickups (on this guitar, the neck pickup cable routes through the bridge cavity).
I leaned heavily on the wiring diagrams published by GuitarFetish, including the “TELE WIRING DIAGRAM” on page 2 of this PDF (albeit with 500K pots and a 223M (.022µF) capacitor), and the Kwikplug - Coil Tap diagram on the Tele 2 Humbuckers page (direct image link). I’m also learning about potentiometers. Including how to test one, how they’re diagrammed ([TODO: Did I screw this up initially?). I also went through the free Seymour Duncan Pickup Installation 101 course online (including the “how to solder” module).
This is fugly but it’s what I could quickly throw together with a tiny bit of ChatGPT, and a few minutes with Gimp and Preview:
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| Wiring diagram. After a fashion. |
Pickup leads
The leads coming out of the humbucker pickups are connected to the pickup selector switch (red), the push/pull switch in the tone pot (white), and the back of the volume pot (ground) (black and silver/copper).
Switch: This guitar uses a standard three-position toggle switch: bridge pickup only, both pickups, neck pickup only. There are essentially three lugs on one end (one for each bridge on the outside, and a joined pair of lugs between them), and a single lug on the other. I have each of the two red (positive) leads from each KwikPlug cable (KPN-R, KPB-R) soldered to an outside lug. The ground lug isn’t currently connected to anything but should go to ground, I’ll fix that.
Tone Pot Push/Pull: The tone pot with its push/pull switch (for the coil split) has seven lugs in a box at the bottom; three sets of non-linked switched lugs, and at the bottom, a ground that’s connected to the back of the pot; we’ll call them:
1A 1B
2A 2B
3A 3B
For the coil split I wired it like this:
+---------+
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| •-----•-U---- 7th lug (GND)----+
KPN-W----U-• •-U---- KPB-W |
| o o | |
| | |
+----•----+ |
|___________________________|
So when the pot is pulled out, 2A (neck pickup white lead) is connected to 1A (ground) and 2B (bridge pickup white lead) is connected to 1B (ground), which activates the single coil mode. When the switch is pushed in, 2A is connected to 3A (no connection, so, no effect), and 2B is connected to 3B (same).
Volume Pot (Ground): The black and silver/copper leads from each pickup are soldered together and each pair kept connected with heat shrink tubing. Those leads are soldered to the back of the volume pot, after an area of the back of the pot was scuffed up with the Dremel.
Toggle Switch
Side lugs: Each connected to one of the two red (positive) leads from each KwikPlug cable (KPN-R, KPB-R).
Middle (joint) lug: A red wire (SWO) connected to the left lug (viewed from the back) of the volume pot.
Single lug at the other end of the switch: No connection (N/C). (Should go to ground?)
Volume Pot
(More information in this great video... and this segment of Guitar Wiring for Beginners, and this breakdown of how the internals work ... How to determine which lug is which, with a multimeter)
Left lug (viewed from the back, lugs pointing down): Connected to SWO wire, and another red wire connected to the middle lug (wiper) of the tone pot.
Middle lug (wiper): Connected (red wire) to the tip connector in the 1/4" instrument jack (JT).
Right lug: Connected via a bridge wire to the back of the volume pot (GND).
Back of pot (ground): Connected to:
- Volume pot right lug (jumper wire)
- Bridge pickup negative and shield (KPB-B, KPB-S)
- Neck pickup negative and shield (KPN-B, KPN-S)
- Tone pot ground (black wire)
- Bridge ground (black wire)
Tone Pot
(I’m still kind of wrapping my brain around this. ChatGPT explained like I’m 5.)
Right lug (viewed from the back, with the push/pull switch box below and its lugs pointing straight at you): Connected to one leg of the .022µF capacitor; the other leg is connected to the tone pot’s ground lug.
Middle lug (wiper): Connected (red wire) to volume pot left lug
Right lug: (I also had a lead going from this lug to the volume pot ground, which was a mistake - not sure where that came from. The result was a tone knob that had basically no effect until it was all the way up, at which point it cut the sound out entirely! Whoops...)
Back of pot (ground): Connected to:
- Right lug via .022µF capacitor
- Back of volume pot
- 1/4" jack shield
Strings
So I switched to D’Addario NYXL 1046s a few months ago and I love them. They play well, they’re bright, they barely require any stretching and then hold tune forever, and they last longer than the Ernie Ball strings I used for decades. So I was dismayed when I found out the company ended up in some controversy, after first an allegedly generative AI promo video, and then their apparently heavy-handed denial and repression of any discussion about it. Tempest in a tea pot? Maybe. Hopefully. I like my D’Addario stuff. I almost bought merch, recently. But it definitely got me thinking.
I have (probably counterfeit) Ernie Ball strings on it now, .090-.042s I found recently and have no good use for. Since I’m still getting everything dialed in, why not use sacrificial strings, y’know? And I recently bought several sets of D’Addario NYXLs, and I’m not going to not use them. Moving forward? Kinda want to see how the current situation ends. But if “we” end up (still?) boycotting D’Addario, I’ve heard good things about Stringjoy. The Signatures are, from what I’ve read, the closest to the NYXLs, and are roughly the same price ($11.99 vs. $12.99 for the NYXLs).
Related, TIL: What I’ve been calling a guitar pick for years is formally known as a plectrum.
Setup
While waiting for a case to be called on Court Connect, I tuned it up, set the bridge height / action (went for middle of the road until I get a feel for it; 1.75 mm (low E) / 1.50 mm (high E) at the 12th fret, as is prophesied. Then the intonation most were spot on, two had were flat so I had to loosen the strings to get at the saddle adjustment screws, and move the saddles closer to the bridge). Pickup height set during this session, too, ~2.0 mm (bass) / 1.5 mm (treble) at the bridge, 2.5/2.0 mm at the neck.
Verdict
I’ve noodled on it a couple of hours by now and it plays way better than it did before I started futzing with it. Some of it might just be psychological - the deep cleaning, the polish and waxing, the fingerboard oil, fresh strings. But some of it's the proper setup, crunchy pickups, the flexibility of coil splitting this guitar never had stock, etc. Whatever the combination is, I’ll take it. I wanted a “Super Strat” I could take to practices, jam sessions, gigs, and not worry about it too much. Including the guitar itself, I have like $300 in this thing now, and it’s setup so much better than the vast majority of the $300 guitars out there (I got really, really lucky with a couple of Eclipse-style LTDs over the past year; that’s not the norm - although maybe it soon will be?).
Pictures
That I may caption, and/or organize, at some point, some day.
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| Measuring the original hardware to make sure the Guyker stuff will fit without drilling |
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| The headstock with the original tuners and truss rod cover |
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| Pitting and corrosion on the bridge and pickup screws |
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| Swapping the tuner hardware and maintaining the fretboard with my steadfast assistant |
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| The Guyker tuners are drop-in replacements for the “ESP” branded tuners originally on this guitar |
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| Another shot showing how cleanly the Guyker hardware lines up with the stock stuff |
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| Work in progress... |
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| Before... |
Electronics installation
Before
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| Tapping the tuner poles with a magnetic tip screwdriver to suss out the wiring |
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| Removing the stock “ESP LH150” pickups |
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| Korean manufacturer of lower end OEM pickups, like the “ESP” LH150s in this entry level LTD |
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| The control cavity before I rip everything out |
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| The red two-conductor cable went to the neck pickup |
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| How the pickup selector switch was wired |
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| A different angle of the volume pot (note the jumper wire grounding the right lug) |
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| Tone pot |
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| Tone pot |
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| Reverse engineered diagram of factory wiring |
The rebuild
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| KwikPlug™ wiring; I added the red heat shrink tubing to easily identify the bridge pickup wiring |
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| Switchcraft 1/4" instrument cable, with my attached wiring |
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| Quick release connectors for 1/4" jack, ground-to-guitar-bridge wire |
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| The tone pot / push-pull switch didn’t come with any wiring information, so I tested it out |
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| Tone pot .022μF capacitor (heat shrink tubing) |
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| Connecting the top two switch pins to ground. |
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| Close-up of the volume pot wiring and embarrassing solder blobs |
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| Kind of hard to see but I scuffed the left edge with a Dremel and wire brush |
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| Everything’s starting to come together, except that black grounding wire off the tone pot lug shouldn’t be there (and if you look closely, I have the wrong lug grounded through the capacitor on the tone knob, d’oh!) |
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| Volume knob in the helping hands; my solder blobs on the back ain’t great, but they’ll get better |
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| Quickly testing the wiring before closing everything up |
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| Everything tucked into the cavity; no wire ties yet, I’m still testing and troubleshooting |
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New pickup rings installed with the pickups hanging from them |
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| It’s starting to come together! Ernie Ball strings in for “sea trials.” One exhausted rescue pup. |
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| Wiring all works now; tidied up a bit and secured. |
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