How to wire a Gibson Les Paul electric guitar

Wiring a Gibson Les Paul Guitar

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Gibson Les Paul Style Guitar KIt

Click pic to see LP style kit

WiRING A LES PAUL

The Les Paul is the guitar for playing rock music. Nothing will get your blood boiling more than

one of these guitars combined with a vintage Marshall amp. The powerful Les Paul humbucking pickups

eliminate unwanted noise and give the guitar a fat and crisp sound. The mahogany body also helps

shape the sound on this amazing guitar.

TOOLS FOR THE JOB

First, we need to talk about the tools you will need for changing your electronics.

1 – Output jack

4 – 500K pots

2 – .020µF capacitor

1 – Gibson toggle switch

1 – guitar wire 22AWG, white

1 – guitar wire 22AWG, black

1 – 25+ Watt soldering iron

1 – phillips screwdriver

1 – wire cutting and stripping tool

1 – rosin core solder

Now that you have an understanding of the strat and tele guitar wiring, let’s look at the Les Paul.

It’s actually setup pretty similar to the telecaster wiring, with the addition of a toggle switch,

and an extra volume and tone control. Also, the potentiometers are increased to 500K to bring out more of

the highs. Take a look at how the rhythm pickup is wired. Each pickup follows this pattern. The

pickup goes into the volume pot, then out to the tone control. The main output to the jack comes

from the toggle switch. The tone pots have .020 uf capacitors which send the treble to ground.

Notice how the toggle switch works. One side turns the treble pickup on, and the other side turns

the rhythm pickup on. The two middle connections turn both pickups on. These inner two lugs need to

be connected together. Some Gibson style toggle switches will have only three lugs, one for the

treble pickup, one for the output, and one the rhythm pickup. The far left and far right toggle

switch lugs will connect to the middle 2 volume pot lugs. Also, a ground wire will be attached to

the back side of the toggle switch.

The rest of the wiring is pretty simple. Add the .020 uf capacitors to the tone pots and make sure

that every pot has a ground wire soldered to its case. Also, solder the ground wire from the bridge

post to one of the pots where the other ground wires are connected. The bridge ground wire

needs to touch some part of the metal bridge, like one of the posts. All ground wires will need to

be connected to each other. Don’t forget to add a ground wire that connects to the ground lug on

the output jack. And that’s all there is to it.

Most of the wires in this photo are shielded in grey and black cables, so it is hard to see what’s

going on. The thick black cables house the pickup hot and ground wires.

Now take a look at the output jack. Both wires are shielded in a grey cable.

Here is the finished wiring.

Note: if you have a 4-wire humbucking pickup, then you will need to connect the two finish wires

together, unless you plan on hot rodding your guitar. Once the finish wires are connected, they

will form a series link, which will boost the output. This will leave you with a hot wire that goes

to the volume pot, and 2 ground wires that go to the volume pot case. The diagram below shows a

humbucker that uses the same wire color codes as a Seymour Duncan pickup. Check out the question

and answers section for more info on wiring 4-wire humbucking pickups.

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