Complete wiring upgrade for Epi LP

[ZoomZilla]

Ok, I am going to rewire my Epi and will order my parts this weekend most likely. Monday at the latest. Ok, so here is my question. I am thinking about 50's wiring and have looked at a bunch of sites, but not sure exactly which one to use and which are the best parts. I don't want a kit because I want to add push pull pots for my 4 wire pickups. So anyway, here is what I was thinking. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

CTS 500K pots (volume)
Push Pull 500K split shaft pots (tone)
Switchcraft toggle pickup selector
Vitamin Q caps (Tone factory or AP? Don't know which ones)
Switchcraft output jack.

Here is the site I was looking at and here are the caps. I don't know exactly which caps to go with. There are tone factory and AP, which is better? Also, what wire do I need? I am going to gut the EPI and rewire the whole thing, so I would need wire for Toggle and output jack. I am sure the bridge ground wire is fine to keep. Oh, that brings up another point, what wire do I use to create the ground loop. Sorry for being a noob, but you guys are a lot smarter than I am so your help would be great. I can solder well, but don't know exactly what parts I should get.

Oh, that brings up one more point. With the push pull pots, will I need to scrap the 50's wiring and do it differently?

Here is the site I was looking at.

Capacitors, Wire & Jacks - Specialty Guitars

[Texas07R8]

I put Burstbuckers 1 & 2 in my epi flametop and purchased matched CTS pots all above 500k and I got the 0.022uf Sprauge orange Caps and it sounded fantastic. I don't know if that's the right one for your setup but I like them in mine.

I don't know about the push pull with the 4 conductor wires, I've seen online many diagrams of how the wiring goes but I don't remember if they recommend what guage wire to use. Ground wire isn't too critical, use some wire at least as heavy as what you have now.

[ZoomZilla]

I misspoke earlier. I don't want a ground loop, I want to do a star ground. It seems like a lot of the pics of the wiring that people have put on here have a ground loop.

[ZoomZilla]

I ordered parts from Wymore Guitars. They had cheaper prices. I had forgotten about it, but I found it in my favorites folder. Jeff (Weldaar) had told me about that site a while back. Great prices and great products. Now, the only thing left to do is to try to figure out how I want to wire the Push Pull pots. Coil tap, series/parallell, out of phase in phase. The options are endless. I will have to give this some thought.

[ZoomZilla]

Well I attempted to go with the series/parallel wiring on the Seymour Duncan website. However, the toggle in the middle position does nothing. I wonder if it's a bad toggle, plus I have terrible noise, so my grounds are probably not good and my neck pickup is louder than my bridge. This stinks. If I cannot fix it, I will just put the the stock stuff back in.

[ZoomZilla]

Moron, idiot, noob! You know, common sense has to enter in at some point. Here is a tip for all you first time modders, don't do exactly what was done before! Ok, so I pull out the old toggle and drop in a new allparts toggle. So I wire it EXACTLY like it was before. The only problem is that the Epiphone had all the contacts on one side, and the ground by itself on the opposite. So I do all this wiring and I am about ready to rip it all out and start over, then it hits me. Why in the world would the toggle not work in the middle position and why is one pickup louder than the other. Hmm, let's look. Hello, the ground is the middle lug and the middle lug is on the opposite side of the switch. I had the ground wired to the output lug and the output lug wired to the ground. No wonder why I had so much noise!!! What a moron. So anyway, all is good now. I have not taken her for a test drive yet, I have a party to go to, but I am interested to see how she sounds.

[Horse]

Originally Posted by ZoomZilla

Moron, idiot, noob! You know, common sense has to enter in at some point. Here is a tip for all you first time modders, don't do exactly what was done before! Ok, so I pull out the old toggle and drop in a new allparts toggle. So I wire it EXACTLY like it was before. The only problem is that the Epiphone had all the contacts on one side, and the ground by itself on the opposite. So I do all this wiring and I am about ready to rip it all out and start over, then it hits me. Why in the world would the toggle not work in the middle position and why is one pickup louder than the other. Hmm, let's look. Hello, the ground is the middle lug and the middle lug is on the opposite side of the switch. I had the ground wired to the output lug and the output lug wired to the ground. No wonder why I had so much noise!!! What a moron. So anyway, all is good now. I have not taken her for a test drive yet, I have a party to go to, but I am interested to see how she sounds.

ha well it happens to all of us mate! dont be so hard on yourself!

[ZoomZilla]

Thanks Horse. You just have to laugh at yourself when you do dumb stuff like that. I looked at it and I thought, what a moron! Ok, so I took her for a test drive. Oh man! What a difference. This thing rocks hard now. I love it!

[Hectgore]

how are the pots and caps from there?

[Horse]

Originally Posted by ZoomZilla

Thanks Horse. You just have to laugh at yourself when you do dumb stuff like that. I looked at it and I thought, what a moron! Ok, so I took her for a test drive. Oh man! What a difference. This thing rocks hard now. I love it!

cool bro, its great to put in the effort and be rewarded with a great result!