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How to guide - Making your own 50s or modern style harness/loom (pots section)
Let's dive right in, because we have already covered the tools and parts we'll need in the main article HERE.
You may be installing a pre-wired harness, but I thought it would be useful to show how to wire up a Les Paul pot harness from scratch as well. So if you have a pre-wired harness you can skip this stage, but if you're planning a re-wire from scratch please do read on!
You may be installing a pre-wired harness, but I thought it would be useful to show how to wire up a Les Paul pot harness from scratch as well. So if you have a pre-wired harness you can skip this stage, but if you're planning a re-wire from scratch please do read on!
How to Guide - Wiring a Les Paul
Replacing, or in some cases, upgrading your Les Paul’s wiring may be a matter of necessity if there are niggling faults like noisy pots or a faulty switch perhaps. But you may also have considered replacing it as a way of improving or modifying the guitar to suit your personal tastes too, whether it’s a traditional 50s style re wire or adding push pull pots for coil splitting for further versatility. I have decided to put together this article, with each aspect of a re-wire pieced together as sub-articles, to help point out some details which will hopefully help you in re-wiring your Les Paul, whether that's with individual components, or with a pre-wired harness kit. As there is so much to cover here, I quickly realised that attempting to do this all in one would be too much, so I have decided to have one main article here and link to smaller articles for each task. That way you don’t have to read through every detail if you are only taking on a specific task.
Short shaft or long shaft bushing pots for my Les Paul, which will I need?
When it comes to Les Paul wiring queries, the question I probably get asked most is, "Will I need long or short shaft pots?". Unfortunately it can sometimes be a long or a short answer too, depending on your variation of Les Paul. Gibson are known for lots of transitional changes to specs from the golden era right up to modern day so the info can be a little cloudy as to which you'll actually need. The reason why some models require long 'shaft' pots and others require short 'shaft' so to speak is down to the maple top or cap used on that model, and how the cavity has been routed.