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I haven't jumped into the deep end of this one quite yet. Just cracked it open to see what I was dealing with.

The customer wants me to replace the stock pickups with some Seymour Duncans. Should be pretty simple. Nope. Turns out this guitar has a circuit board that everything is plugged into. Theoretically I know I can still hook up the new pickups the traditional way, but with the circuit board in there who knows what will happen to the circuit after the fact. Throwing this out there to the wisdom of the masses, would you recommend replacing the complete harness with something more traditional? He doesn't want any coil tapping or anything else special. Removing the existing harness as is will ensure that its easier to revert the guitar to its stock specs in the future.

Rip it all out and install new pots. Your customer will thank you later.

Every time these come through the door I always recommend a full "gut and rewire" procedure. The board is more a side effect of upping production than it is anything really important.

Yank the wretched thing and put in real honest pots, switches, and a jack made in the US. This is one of the things Gibson customers want them to ditch, but they haven't taken the hint yet.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Ditch that crap.... Install some CTS or Bournes pots and a switchcraft jack.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Thanks everyone, that's what I was leaning towards. Someone on another forum recommended some quick connectors on e-bay that I could solder to the new pickups and leave this mess as is, but this just irks me. The customer is cool with me doing that too, so I guess I will.

A half-assed low quality solution.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I just did my own Les Paul and took all that b******* out and replaced it with 50's wiring and CTS pots with bumble bee caps. My Les Paul came with 61's which weren't bad but they also were not that PAF tone that I had when I was a kid.

The pups I put in are Throbaks and I'm VERY impressed with these pups now that I have hours and hours of playing them on my own Lester. By the way I also replaced the ABR-1 like.... bridge and tail piece with Faber German steel replacements that lock down to the body.

Anyway I agree with all the others who recommend pitching that crap and simply setting it up like a traditional Les Paul. I wasn't and won't be into coil taps either so it sounds like your geezer client is a lot like my geezer client which was me...

BTW check out Throbak's site for some cool videos on their processes using the original winders that g*bson used to create the original PAF's. There is good info on 50's wiring too if you are into that kind of thing.

Did I mention that I am most impressed with these pups? . We install real deal PAFs from time to time for some of our better known and wealthier clients (a PAF can go for thousands....) and the Throbak copies sound every bit as good.

I recently traded into a 2013 Traditional, Duncan antiquities, Emerson 50's wiring harness, and the Faber parts mentioned above, big chunky neck, glorious sound and sustains for days.

My apprentice and I recently finished up a couple of scratch tele builds. Tested several combinations of pickups and wiring harness's. Conclusion most pickups aren't all that bad, most factory wiring harness's are

Wow, I didn't know you could drop six bills on a set of new pickups! But, suddenly felt myself "needing" some. After all, you can't really put a price on good tone.

I haven't followed the humbucker scene for quite some years since I switched to fender style guitars. Question: I used to have an 80's 335 with original Gibson pickups that I thought had great tone and I always assumed there we're PAF, no?

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Pat

Hey Pat I think.

The 56 through 62 "patent applied for" original hum bucking pick-ups are what I'm speaking of when I talk about PAFs. These early hum buckers had tons of character, thickness and even some growl and are very much part of that tone in the rock and roll greats of the 60's and even early 70's. They can go for thousands each these days or you can go for a copy which can be very good too.

We recently replaced a modern PAF wanna be with an original that had had one coil recently rewound at Elderly's. The buyer bought it for north of $1,000 even though one coil was new and not original....

Your 80's 335 had g*bson modern copies of the originals and these pups are not valuable like the originals. Some of that great tone you experienced was likely the pups but much of it was the chassis I would bet too.

Anyway many pups today are rather lifeless and lack character. It's kind of weird that much of the stuff that no one wanted originally when I was a kid and the original PAFs are in this boat along with the late 60's Les Pauls is valuable these days. Go figure.

Very cool we should get together with a couple of jars and our Les Pauls. I'll bring the Baseman and Hendrix Fuzz Face

You got it! Came in the other afternoon and the wife was loading up a Rooster for a friend at work. Quart jar on the table, that was a high dollar Rooster:)

I'll look into those throbak's Hesh. I've tried a bunch of different things, but I'm in love with Lollar's. There's so many good pickups out there, but I've yet to try anything that's knocked me over the way every set of Lollar's I've tried has.