Friday, April 8, 2011

Simple and Popular „Volume + Tone” Guitar Wiring

This time I would like to show you some very popular guitar wiring. It's based on two humbuckers, two pots (volume and tone) and a 3-way pickup selector in the „import style” (China, Korea). This is a very common configuration, especially in guitars made in Asia.


The wiring paths are very clear. The guitar signal goes from the pickups to selector, than to the volume pot, where some amount of treble can be filtered-out if the tone control will be used. The next stage is the output - jack socket.

There is a possibility, that your pickup selector pinout looks very similar to this on my diagram, but works inversely. I think that there are few manufacturers of this type of selectors, so there can be some small differences between similar parts.

I didn't put any pot and cap values here, because this project should be universal. If you don't know what values your guitar wiring parts have: pots have probably 500K, tone cap got probably 22nF (0,022uF). Even if the values are different, my suggestion will not ruin your guitar tone.

I hope it will help you to understand or repair your axe.