SG Pre-Wired Harness Instructions
This harness is quite possibly one of the easiest to install because of its minimal number connections to be made. Essentially, attach your pickup “hot” wires to your volume pot input lugs, attach your pickup grounds, and attach your bridge ground.
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Instructions
Step 1 - Complete a dry run test fit. Install the harness and make sure that all your potentiometers, toggle, and jack are able to be installed. Some minor adjustment may need to be made as locations change slightly from manufacturer and year to year. You may need to enlarge your potentiometer holes to ⅜”.
Step 2 - Once you are sure that everything fits properly go ahead and tighten your harness to the body with the supplied nuts and washers.
Step 3 - Identify the wires coming from outside of the control cavity. There should be three, as follows:
3a - Bridge Ground - This grounds the tuners, strings, and bridge to help eliminate RF interference (aka buzzing)
3b - Bridge Pickup Lead - May be 4-conductor, may be vintage style braided shield, or some variety in between.
3c - Neck Pickup Lead - - May be 4-conductor, may be vintage style braided shield, or some variety in between as well.
Step 4 - Ground your tuners, strings, and bridge by soldering the bridge ground to the back of the volume pot. This is usually a piece of buss wire coming from the stop bar. These wires tend to be a little stiff and want to pop up when you remove the soldering iron. You may want to hold it down with a small screw driver while you remove the soldering iron to ensure a solid connection.
Step 5 - Connect your pickups to their respective volume pots
A - If you have vintage style braided shield lead follow these steps
i - You’ll want to push back that outer shield about an inch, and the push back your cloth insulation about half an inch.
ii - Feed your inner stranded wire through the volume input lug (circled in red in the picture above) and bend it upward to make a solid mechanical connection. Heat the joint and apply solder. Allow it to cool on its own.
iii - Ensuring that the cloth insulation is protecting the inner bare wire from making contact to the pot casing, push back your outer shield so that the end of it is located on the pot casing.
iv - Heat the joint between the pot casing and the outer shield and apply solder. Again you may want to hold this down when a small screw driver as they have a tendency to pot up when you lift the iron.
v - Repeat steps i - iv for your bridge pickup on the bridge volume pot.
B - If you have a more modern style pickup lead follow these steps
i - Identify your “Hot” Wire (ex. Seymour Duncan - Black) and feed it through the lug of the. Bend it upward to secure a solid mechanical connection to the lug. Heat the joint and apply solder. Allow it to cool on its own.
ii - Identify your pickup ground - this could be a green wire for seymour duncan pickups as your signal ground and your bare wire as your chassis ground - or it could be just a bare wire. If you’re unsure consult your pickup maker or shoot me an email.
iii - Solder your pickup ground to the back of the volume pot casing by heating the joint and applying solder. Again hold this down with a small screwdriver so that it does not move as it cools after removing the soldering iron.
iv - Repeat steps i - iii for your bridge pickup lead and bridge volume.