Stagg Update - Pickup #1, isn't this a lot of fun?

The nut seems to be solidly in place, and yes, this is becoming an enjoyable little project.  I think the finished result will be good.

The guitar is light, it resonates well, and aside from a fret level and polish, there isn't much that needs to be done.  It doesn't yet compare to anything else on my wall, but we're getting there.

I'm more and more certain my uncle is going to be pleased.

For now though, it's good enough to put some pickups into the damn thing.

Pictured: Advanced Workshop/Coffee Table hybrid

The thing I hate about Les Pauls is the wiring.  The knobs in one quadrant, the switch in another.  Great for the player, terrible for the worker bee.  So annoying.  Since I hadn't decided if I was going to keep the Epiphone pickups yet, I decided a quick wiring job involving one pickup and one volume would be enough.

Also because punk.  Very punk.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.......

Break out the soldering gun and we're in business.  The pickup is a two conductor affair, so no splitting potential.  It won't matter anyway, because my instructions were to make this sound like "a real Les Paul".

Challenge...uhhh... accepted? I guess?

I went into the drawer and grabbed one of the many Alpha branded pots.  Seems like folks aren't big fans of these, but I chalk that up to CTS pot "cork-sniffing."

At any rate, we'd see what kind of impact just switching out the mini cheapo pots would make. Once again my Gerber (Mr. Gerber? Gerby Puckett?) came in handy, acting as a pot holder.  Seriously, go buy a Gerber.  So useful.

Unfortunately, once I was "finished" soldering I noticed that I wired the output to the jack without threading the wire through the hole.  Oops.  That was stupid.

This is not a picture of that.  But it IS the offending jack.

 I quickly tested it and corrected the situation.  Once corrected, I screwed in the output jack completely and put the cavity cover on - there's a lot of wire in there to facilitate getting all the way to the switch, so the plate will hold the coiled up wire from getting caught on anything for now.

The sound?  MUCH better.  Through my little Marshall it sounded just as it should, and the pickup cleaned up very nicely when the knob was rolled off.  The sound is so good I'm inclined to forgo the tone control on the bridge pickup to keep the signal more direct.  Then again, I suppose that wouldn't be a real Les Paul.

Next steps will be to finish the wiring, but for now I'm going to enjoy the "Junior-esque" quality of this setup for a day or two longer.