Free guitar building course · Part 7
Electronics
and wiring,
explained.
An hour and a half on the part that intimidates people unnecessarily. Four components and one signal path — once you know what each does, you can choose instead of copying.
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Chapter markers coming — paste the timestamps from the video description into the chapters field in videos.py and they become clickable here.
What this covers
- How a passive pickup circuit actually behaves
- Pot values and taper, and what each does to your tone
- Tone capacitors, and how the value sets the roll-off
- Switching — three-way, five-way, coil splits and series/parallel
- Shielding, grounding and killing hum
- Soldering technique that does not cook your components
The whole theory in a paragraph
A passive pickup is a coil of wire. Everything you connect to it forms a filter with it, and loading that coil means losing treble. Higher pot values load it less and keep more top end, which is why humbuckers usually get 500k and single coils 250k. That is most of it.
Star grounding. Run every ground to one point rather than daisy-chaining them. Ground loops are a common source of buzz in home builds and are entirely avoidable.
Written companion in progress. The wiring reference covers component choice in more depth.
Watch the builds on YouTube
Full build videos, start to finish, including the parts that went wrong.
Build series · New video most monthsTools and pages that go with this
The written reference covers pot values, capacitor choice and switching options in more depth, and makes a good companion while the soldering iron is hot.