535 wiring harness update

[neutria49]

Well, didn't go so well. I made a perfect harness copying the original pretty much and encasing everything in plastic tubing so nothing would ground out. My friend with the caps didn't come through so I tried soldering several different caps to wires I had soldered to the pots. I don't like to resolder pots much because the heat can kill them. But that idea didn't work so well as things started falling apart with everything dangling out the f-holes. So I installed a set of Seth's that were loaned to me by Hbom because the Ian Anderson's would have required more work. I chose the path of least resistance. They sounded really nice though I don't think they improved things over the HRWs. In hindsight I probably should have left well enough alone and stuck with the HRWs.

 

I was really proud of myself after making the magnificent harness. And I felt good about the project. Then I had the above mentioned problems and had to deal with some events that put me in a really bad mood. It was not the time to find one's tone anyway with things looming. It has been one of the worst years of our lives of just prolonged and substantial shit that has really eaten away at everyone's core here since late winter last year ('15).

 

My workbench was the dining room table and it needed cleared for Christmas anyway so all though I probably wouldn't have worked much on the project it was another interruption with having to put everything away that I needed to use to do the job. The more I saw the guitar over those few weeks all wires hanging out of it the more pissed I got because all I wanted to do was play it. Or sometimes just hold it. But my fragile harness was dangling out of it like a wound dangling intestines. And I also ran out of solder. So today I decided I'd just button her up and be done with it.

 

I began the day by removing the bridge pup from the mounting ring and started sanding it to match the arch on the top. That went fairly well. But after I got the harness inside and tried to get the neck volume pot into the mounting hole I realized the neck pup lead was about 5/8ths of an inch short. Yes, the Seth's are true to historic form and they didn't think of running the wire out the other side of the pickup. So when you have the screw side up the wire is coming out the bass side instead of the treble side which if it did would free up about 2 inches of wire.

 

Remounting the bridge pup to the ring really beat up my hands and nerves. Those damn springs. I know I could have used some tubing but I wanted to be vintage correct. But I didn't have the strength to do it again for the neck pup so I just flipped it around. So now it's angled the wrong way and the screw side is down instead of at the neck. Oh Well! That's how it's going to stay for a while. I adjusted the (bobbin) screws pretty high so I doubt it matters anyway. I'm sure one of you will tell me it matters and I'd like that. Education is good.

 

So I think I'm done with this project for a while. I've discovered that I like to play more than I like to mod which when I got back into this I thought would be the opposite. I've learned a lot from doing this. One thing is I don't think I want to be a guitar tech. I don't mind changing strings (actually I hate it) or adjusting the truss rod (I am really picky about that) but pup swaps, especially in a f-hole, it's gonna be tougher to get me to do it.

[TalismanRich]

Ah, welcome to the world of the semi hollow wiring harness.

 

Back a few years ago, I had a pot that was getting really noisy, so I decided to pull the harness, change the pot and reinstall. While I was doing that, the wire that comes out of the tone cap broke off right at the cap, so then it was time to replace the cap. I was doing this through the f-hole rather than the pickup hole, so it was tricky getting the pots back through the hole (just have to be set up at the right angle to go in), so now there is a little bit of a dent where a bit of a soldered wire hit the edge.

 

Oh yeah, while I had the harness out, I added a treble bleed circuit to it.

 

In the end, it played fine, and who cares if its got a dent. The only problem is that now the switch is getting noisy, I'm thinking maybe just redo the whole thing with an RS harness. Or maybe a Mojotone harness. They are usually at the Spartanburg Guitar Show which is two months away.

 

Maybe I'll try that, when I'm feeling really mellow...