Wiring a LP to bypass the tone and vol pots?

T

thefyn

New member
I've been on a bit of a clarity quest and I have a Les Paul I only use for recording metal.

I've recently had great results upgrading to cobalt strings, bareknuckle pickups, evidence cables and remember someone mentioning to me that people often overlook the quality of the internal wiring of their guitars and cabs.

I'm not sure if I want to go crazy with expensive wire inside the cab, or power cables etc but one thing I never use is the tone/vol pots.

Can I bypass them and go from the pup selector switch to the output? My vol pot is on the way out and only works if I turn it down a tiny amount...But I never use them anyway.

So is it possible? And does anyone have a wiring diagram?
 
Michael Wagner always made his guitarists record with a Steinberger guitar that was wired straight from the pickups to the output jack. It'd be cool if you could wire it up so it was on a toggle, so when you were recording, you could just flip the switch to that kind of wiring.
 
IntenseJim":3boev6jr said:
I've done temporarily when I was troubleshooting a cavity. The guitar gets considerably brighter.
Click to expand...

This.....I think I have a diagram somewhere from the last time. If I can find it I'll throw it up in here. :thumbsup:

Also as an aside, I have a buddy that wires one vol/tone pot as a blower switch; once you hit that, then either/or pups goes right to the jack wide open, so you can still use the neck pup if you want.
 
Thanks guys, but I don't want to switch back and forth. I just want it wired wide open but obviously able to switch pups.
 
So you want to bypass both your volumes and tones? Sorry for the crude image, but this should get you to where you need to be. It's best to leave the pots in the guitar and use them as grounds. That way, you don't have to worry about tons of solder on the output jack:

http://i.imgur.com/WlJaOQN.jpg

Basically, all the grounds go to the pots. The wire that went to the volume pot now goes to the switch. It would be wise to use some sort of kill switch to cut the signal. Otherwise, you'll have to use some sort of volume pedal, tuner to mute it, etc.
 
Okay, let's make this easy and almost free.

1. Remove the capacitors. This disconnects the tone controls completely. This will make the guitar a bit brighter.
2. Install 1M (1 megaohm) volume pots. 1M will load down the pickups less than the 500k pots that are in the guitar now, so it will be a bit brighter. In terms of sound, there isn't much difference between having 1M pots and no pots at all. IMHO, you need a volume control so you can turn off the guitar between songs, etc.

I won't try to tell you how to play, but... you're missing out on a lot if you never use your volume controls. There are vast swaths of tonal territory you are not exploring. Just sayin...
 
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