335 STYLE GUITAR RE WIRE

coolehandluke

Hi I have a 335 style guitar which needs a re wire. I was thinking of doing the 50s wiring but realised that if the capacitor was used to bridge the tone and volume pot as per all the drawings I have seen. They show the capacitor crossing the F hole once installed. Presently the tone capacitor is connected to the centre lug of the tone pots and ground to the tone pot casing which is the way Lindy Fralin shows it. is there a way to do the 50s wiring with using the capacitor to bridge both pots?
another question is "Do you gain anything from doing 50s wiring instead of using a treble bleed?

many thanks 

Funkfingers

Treble bypass!  

Linking each pair of volume and tone controls via the capacitor would make some sense if all four pot cases were also linked by a solid core grounding wire. That way, they would maintain the relative distances between one another.

Unfortunately, this degree of rigidity will make it more difficult to persuade the bits in through the pickup aperture.

Attach any capacitors or resistors to the appropriate pot(s). Link the pots, switch and jack with flying cables. 

Guide the pots and jack out and back in using rubber tubing. If you are not confident about this, pay a reputable guitar tech to do it.

Dave_Mc

This is just an "in general" response (335 wiring scares the crap out of me), but 50s wiring retains some (not all) treble when you roll the volume down and arguably sounds more "natural" than a treble bleed.

However, as I implied above, it doesn't retain as much treble as a treble bleed, so it might not be enough- and it also makes the volume and tone controls interactive. It doesn't affect things when both controls are full up, but when one of them is below "up full", adjusting the other control does strange things. So, for example, if you have the volume control at 7, rolling the tone down from 10 will initially cut volume rather than treble. Or if you have the tone at 7 with the volume up full, rolling the volume control down will cut volume dramatically (I think! That's not usually the way I would turn the controls, I'm going from pretty hazy memory there).

The other annoying thing is that if you like rolling down from heavily distorted to clean, it's very hard to do that without having to adjust both the volume and tone controls together- you have to roll the volume down to about 1, and then roll the tone down to 7 or so to get proper cleanup. That means 4 controls to adjust if you're on the middle position, which is a bit of a pain if you're trying to do it on the fly...

EDIT: The other annoying thing is that if you do decide 50s wiring doesn't retain enough treble, you'll probably have to rewire to modern wiring if you want to fit a treble bleed, because 50s wiring + treble bleed cap will probably retain too much treble...

ICBM

The only change you need to make for 50s wiring is to move the connection for the tone control from the pickup terminal to the switch terminal on the volume pot. The cap can stay between the tone pot and ground.

Don’t run components or wiring across the f-hole, it’s always the sign of an amateur bodge job.

I don’t generally like treble pass (*not* treble bleed, that’s what a tone control does) caps on two-volume guitars, and especially not with 50s wiring.

BillDL

If you have never made a wiring look for a semi-acoustic and you are keen to try it for yourself, then here's some tips:

1. Get some tracing paper or paper thin enough that you can lay it across the face of the guitar and draw the outlines of the F-Hole, the pot holes, the toggle switch hole, the outlines of the pickup holes and where the output socket is.
2. Now flip it over and mark on it which is up and down and what end is the neck end.  It's easy to become disoriented.  Remember that you will be working on the components as though you are sitting inside the guitar looking at them.
3. Transfer your outline onto a piece of stiff board like thin plywood, hardboard or even stiff cardboard.  Bore holes large enough to push the threaded part of your pots and toggle switch through.  Mark the top, bottom and front and back on the board and write next to the holes which volume and tone pots they are.
4. Push the pot and toggle switch necks and the holes in the board and screw on the nuts.  Align the lugs of the pots much the same as they are if you look into a Les Paul control cavity and make sure that any wires passing between them won't be seen through the F-Hole.
5. The idea now is to create a wiring look that goes from component to component around the perimeter of the F-Hole in one direction, but is far enough back from its edges that it can't be seen. Ideally you want to end up with wires grouped neatly together and held together at regular intervals with small cable ties or similar OR cable with exterior braid, so that when you have finished soldering it all together and undo the nuts of the pots you have a slightly floppy cluster of wires that holds the shape but can still be carefully bent and twisted enough to feed into the guitar body one component at a time.

These are excellent tutorials by @sixtringsupplies who apparently has fingers made from asbestos.




He also sells ready-made harnesses and component kits:
https://sixstringsupplies.co.uk/products/es-335-wiring-kit
https://sixstringsupplies.co.uk/products/es-335-harness

It might all seem a bit pedantic and overkill with all the heatshrink tubing on the jack socket and twisting the ground wire around the three braided wires on the toggle switch, but I find it is worth spending time doing this as it results in very reliable connections.  You don't necessarily need the braided and cloth wire, but it is very neat and is quite easy to work with after a bit of practice.  The braided cable also gives you the results I described at point 5 above, especially if you sleeve it with heatshrink tubing.  That way you can solder the capacitors between the volume and tone pots if you wish and there won't be any strain on the capacitor wires, but I just solder the standard orange capacitors to the backs of the tone pots for the ground connections and it works the same. 

Modern vs 50s wiring explained.  It is for a Les Paul, but the principle is the same:

Three treble pass options: