#eb3mystery complete rewire :: Modded 1970s Gibson EB-3

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The first day back from the long weekend rolls on. Jumping head first into the butchered 1970s Gibson EB-3 mess. Doing my best to get this back as close to stock as you can while dealing with an added 3rd P pickup. I also decided to relocate the previously moved rotary switch back home and add back original controls, so some drilling out of plugs was required. A Curtis Novak choke is going in (original missing), along with Emerson Custom CTS pots. What a mess!

Follow along with this #eb3mystery project here.

New bridge & pots :: Warmoth Strat [8.0 lbs]

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This Warmoth Strat is approximately 30 years old and was tough to play.  The player and I found out that the bridge was vintage spaced and pushed the strings far too close to the edge of the fingerboard.  The solution was to swap it out for a new Callaham V/N bridge.  The "V" stands for vintage mount (6 screws) and the "N" is for narrow spacing.  Wow, what a difference in both playability and sustain.  (note the outer 2 bridge mounting screws were omitted as there must have been a 2 point bridge at some time with two large post holes in the body - we may opt to plug thesein the future).  We also replaced the pots as the old ones were pretty rough.  I used an Emerson Custom 500KA pot for the volume and went with Bourns pots for the tones.  I initially had Emersons in for the tones too but found the sweep far too subtle for most of the pot's travel for this guitar (around 2-3 they began to roll off rather quickly).  The Bill Lawrence bridge pickup's plastic mounting tabs were stripped out so they were plugged and re-tapped.

The pot swap was featured over on the vlog (video below).

Late 60's Gibson Trini Lopez Standard [8.7 lbs] :: refret & bad pots

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Late 60's Gibson Trini Lopez Standard [8.7 lbs] :: refret & bad pots

This guitar had the deepest fingerboard divots I have ever seen.  These divots were addressed along with receiving new frets.  The pots were dirty as well since the "control cavity" is exposed to the elements on hollow guitars.  When attempting to pull the harness to clean it I was surprised to find that the knobs were glued on!  The neck volume pot broke upon removal and the bridge volume was replaced as well due to a bad taper.

Look for a blog post with more details sometime next month.