Changing guitar pickups

Finally the time came. I've finally decided to install my new Seymour Duncan Pickups on to my Epiphone Les Paul with Floyd Rose. The main aim for now is to install SH-4 pickup on the bridge and to change to a push-pull pot on the volume knob.
You can get them from Music123.com



or Musiciansfriend.com



and here is the special edition Nickel Version




Why am I doing this? The default pickups are alright but I miss the single coil strat sound and I have seen some good reviews on the SD Hot Rod set. I wanted to get the DiMarzio push-pull pot but the store didn't have stock so they got me another 500k push-pull pot. Me being a newbie, bought the pot, but little did I know that it is a long pole kind and doesn't directly replace the default pot, but we'll get to that later. Some of the things I got from Seymour Duncan's video here but some is just learning as you go along.




The first thing we need to do is to read the instructions!

First thing is to remove the strings. Since I had a Floyd Rose, it is a bit tricky, plus, this is the first time I'm removing since I just bought the guitar many moons ago. We'll need to loosen the locking nuts near the headstoc and loosen the strings. Then, you'll need to wedge something strong, long and flat (in my case, a fork) under the bridge and unscrew the saddles. You should not have much problems taking out the lower three strings but the high strings may be bent inwards so you'll need to take care while removing them

Then I took out my trusty note book and just drew the wiring up (very roughly). I also took a couple of photos of the current wiring. So far,so good. Then it's time to remove the current connections. I took my solder and tried to remove the ground connectors on the pot but the tin isn't melting. I checked if the solder is hot and ,ow, yes its hot. After about an hour struggling, I decided to cut the ground connections from the base of the pot and then remove the solders from the pot ears. Then its just a matter of wrapping my shirt around the plastic knob, pull it out and just unscrew the nut.



It's time to remove the pickup. Just unscrew the screws holding the pickup plate and the springs connected to the pickup and just pull the humbucker out along with the cable. Make sure all of the connections to the pots has ben severed.

That was the easy bit. Now its time to put the new pickup in and that starts with threading the pickup wire through the wire cavity to the control cavity. Threading is a close enough word as you will need to guide the wire through a hole barely the wire's width for a length of about 3 inches or more. After about 10 tries, the cable just get stuck in the middle of the hole and need to try again. I tried wrapping tape around it but no go. Tried to cut the sleeve off but no help too. At the end, i guided my high E string from the pickup controls to the pickup cavity, hook the cable through the wire and pulled it back through the hole into the control knob. Success!! After 2 hours!!

Now its time to assemble my new push-pull pot. Just put the pot in and... oh oh. The push-pull pot was a long pole pot which is about halve an inch longer than the normal pot. Also, width of the screw is bigger than the normal pot's pole. So its time to take out my pocket knife and scrape abit of the hole off. It didn't feel too bad to put a knife through this guitar but if it were a $2,000 Gibson Les Paul guitar, I would not dream of doing this. Anyway, now the hole is wide enough to fit the pot through but the pole sticks out way to long. I need to put a 1 cm length spacer in there but I was in a rush. So I went through the toolbox and found an old, used glue cover and fortunately it fits.



Now, its time to solder the conections together. Make sure you print out the wiring configuration you desire from the Seymour Duncan website, in my case, it's the push-pull series-parallel setup. I followed as best as I can and soldered the pot. However, the default Epiphone wiring doesn't follow the SD diagram as the cable from the pickup selector switch is made up of 2 wires instead of one. So, i just grounded the bare wire and connected the main cable to the pot. When, I plugged my guitar to my amp, just buzz/static came out. This is when I learnt the importance of grounding the pickup as when I touched my amp cable, the static cleared a bit. So, I connected the ground from the cable jack to the ground of my pot and the noise disappeared. Now, the neck pickup sounds doesn't work at all. I'll probably leave it there for a while and replace it after I've played around with my SD bridge pickup. :)