Stupid question: hollow/semi-hollow body and wiring

Snags

Bit of a ship in a bottle thing this, but ... how do they do the wiring?

Presumably everything gets soldered up out of the body, with lots of spare wire, and then carefully poked through the pickup cavities/f-holes by people with freakishly narrow, long, fingers?

SteveRobinson

Yes. 

I usually put silicone tubing through the pot holes onto the knurled pot shafts so that I can pull them through. For the jack, it's the end of a 1/4" plug soldered to some braided cable.

gary_mac

Aquarium airline tubing, string etc. It can be a faff.

Funkfingers

Suddenly, the idea of mounting the controls to the pickguard and the pickup via bracket to the neck appeals bigly.

munckee

Even reattaching jack sockets in semi hollows is infuriating.  I cannot imagine undertaking a rewire!

Megii

Sometimes there's a decent sized gap to one side of the bridge pickup cavity, which can make life a bit easier, otherwise it all goes in through the f-hole. So, make up the harness, using a card template to get the component spacing right. Then a case of feeding it in, and getting each component positioned and fixed - I go in the order bridge volume pot, bridge tone, neck tone then neck volume, followed by the 3 way and finally the jack plug.

I get things in position by using a loop of dental floss poked through from each fixing hole, and then you can pull the loop through the f-hole with a pair of needle pliers and do a cow-hitch around the thread of the pot/switch/jack concerned, and pull it into place.

Ever so easy to break fine wire connections on the harness, so make it as robust as possible - I use braided shield wire to take the strain, with the shielding soldered to each pot, such that the finer connections don't get pulled on. Also, perhaps cheating a bit, but I pre-attach wires that will go from the harness to each pickup, and feed these through to the pickup cavities, and then attach the pickups there, rather than soldering through the f-hole.

Snags

Thank all.

I have absolutely no intention of doing this, was just considering it whilst playing my semi (ahem) the other night. Particularly as one of the pots was a bit crackly and I was thinking "Hrm, contact cleaner time ... actually, nah, I'll live with it".

Megii

One of those jobs that's a total *&^ing sod the first time, bit of a sod the second time, and after that, remains a bit of a faff, but not really a problem anymore.

octatonic

Watch this:



Yes it is a faff, you will probably scratch the guitar the first time you do it.
I use low tack painters tape to protect the f-holes.

Heartfeltdawn

It is a faff. No question about it! In through the F-holes if there's no cavity in the bridge pickup slot. However not all F-holes are alike. I found this out rewiring a Korean Epi Sheraton. Minipots only with that one and I found a few of the old 70's Japanese 335 clones were similar. 

ICBM

I've come across quite a lot of people over the years who genuinely believe that the electrics are fitted before the top is glued onto the body. There was a '59 (I think) ES-345 on Ebay a few years ago which had a hole cut in the back and a plastic cover plate fitted behind where the jack was. Presumably done by someone who thought that!

I have to say that I've decided that cheating is justified in a lot of cases where pickups only are being swapped - cut and join the wires in the pickup cavities. If you want to do it really 'professionally' you can screw a piece of tag strip to the floor of the cavity. I'm sure there were some guitars that were done like that from the factory, but I can't remember which...

Philtre

Done this on my Epiphone Dot. Twice. The second time I also drilled all the holes wider to take the new pots and switch. So, yeah, can be something that you have to be committed to. ;-)

String. Lots of lengths of string.

merciful-evans

Snags said:

Thank all.

I have absolutely no intention of doing this, was just considering it whilst playing my semi (ahem) the other night. Particularly as one of the pots was a bit crackly and I was thinking "Hrm, contact cleaner time ... actually, nah, I'll live with it".

The day I brought my nice new ES-339 home I had to fish the switch out and clean the contacts. It wasn't as difficult as it looked. The switch is sited right next to the lower f-hole. I certainly wasn't going to do the 90 mile round trip back to the shop.

Its been fine ever since. Car and patience does it.