Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

[Spork Schivago]

Hello,

I don't normally work on guitars but a good friend of mine needed a wire soldered back on the jack for his Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy. It's a special Les Paul I guess, made in the U.S.A. I guess this makes it worth more money or something? He says it's around 1,200$ or so. It looks real nice. Anyway, long story short, the wire wasn't long enough for me to resolder it. So I went to remove the volume knob (the pot). That would have freed up room. I broke the pot. It just started turning and turning and turning. I think someone who put it on didn't put the nut on square.

Instead of making it worse, I decided to take it to the local guitar place and have them cut the nut, replace the pot and resolder the wire. They claimed they were capable of fixing it so I trusted them. Needless to say, this was a terrible idea. They installed a 250K pot but said it takes a 25K pot...I don't know why they just didn't check the continiuty with a multimeter to see what value pot it was. Even though I broke it, you could still check it, I'm sure.

They said they just had to order a 25K pot and they'd be good. Today they called, saying I can take it some other place or I could wait a few weeks and they'll have someone who specializes in these guitars come in and try to fix it. I guess they replaced the pot and now it doesn't work at all. It just makes some weird hum or something. I have no amp to check but this really worries me a lot. I have no idea what they did, I have no idea what wires went where, because I didn't take it apart. I'm not sure what type of potentiometer was in there before, but now I'm not sure this one is right. I try to measure the size by putting my probes on the outside edge. I get around 0 ohm resistance. I take a closer look, and it appears one of the pads are bent onto the shield. I don't know if this is on purpose or what. I don't remember the old one being like this. Here's a picture of what it looks like now. I was hoping someone could help me figure out how to properly wire this bad boy up before my friend denuts me.

Thanks!

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

I can send more pics. They're something called EMG pickups, 81 and 85 (whatever that means). There's a wire hooked to the output jack and then soldered to nothing, just floating in space. I'd think that'd make an antenna and probably isn't good....

[rhomanski]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

That's the blue tooth antenna.

Bwahahahhah. Here's a print that might help.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

Hrmm, that's not for this guitar though. Can I just follow any of them? I found a bunch of different wiring schemes....if I can just pick one and follow it, I'll do that. I figured because they where EMG pickups and the pots were weird and the music place said it was an odd setup, I couldn't just follow something written for another guitar...

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

Here's a closer diagram. But it's still not for this guitar. I know the tone control is 25K, not 500K.

http://s83.photobucket.com/user/Judo...-TV3S.jpg.html

That kinda makes me worreid. What's the volume supposed to be? 25K, 500K, 250K? Are they always the same value? The volume and tone?

The new one is much larger then the old broken one, that's for sure. Physically larger I mean.

There's a 9 volt battery on this guitar as well. Not sure how that hooks up. Pretty sure I'm going to have to unstring this and look at those pickups and see what wires are going where. They got the red wire from the battery connected to two red wires going up by the pickups. Not sure if they're pickup wires or not. There's no wires soldered to the tone pot now....the solder job they did was horrible as well. It's really rocky like.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

Can I just follow this wiring diagram here? Or will things blow up if it's not exactly right?

http://i479.photobucket.com/albums/r...l1Tone3Way.jpg

I gotta figure out the wires for the pickups. Not sure what wire belongs to what. So I figure I can unstring / destring / whatever it's called the guitar and then unscrew those EMG humbuckers and use my DMM to map the wires out. What do you think? I wonder if it's as easy as it looks. Looks like I just gotta unscrew a few screws and they pull right out....

[flocko]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

EMG 81 85 are active humbucker pickups and the pots should be 25K and long shaft for the Les Paul. the wiring for these is not as the print above, go on line to EMG for wiring and the battery connections though jack plug that you say is floating? Hope this is of help Flocko

[vinceroger69]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

https://youtu.be/HoWWQvDsfsU?list=RDf71ewsDLv08

its years since i worked on a guitar as used to do my mates his also had a 9v battery connected to his can you show a picture of all the switches and how there wired now.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

Yes Flocko, this helps. I've never worked on a guitar before and if I had replaced the pot myself, I would have just made a wiring diagram. So, you're saying the diagram I posted, for the two EMG humbuckers, 1 volume and 1 tone knob is incorrect? The wire colours all seem to match up...the only thing not in the drawing is the ground from the bridge (a green wire). I'll go check EMG's site and see if I can find anything.

Also, because they incorrectly installed a much higher pot (around 250K instead of 25K), could that have damaged the pickups? They had a bunch of stuff wired incorrectly from the looks of it.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

Here's how it's currently hooked up...

This is what I have. The jack, the ring is connected to the battery's negative. The sleeve is connected to the bare sheild that gets soldered to the volume pot's shield. The tip gets soldered to the volume pot's middle post.

The three way switch has four wires. A bare wire, a red wire, yellow wire, and white wire. It looks a bit like this:

  B

R Y W

B is bare, R is Red, Y is Yellow, W is White. I feel the red wire from this switch should go to the 85 EMG's white wire. The yellow wire should go to the volume pot's first pad. That first pad should also attach to the tone knob. The white wire from the switch should go to the white wire of the 81 EMG. Both EMG bare wires should be soldered to the volume pot's sheilds. The green grounding wire from the bridge shouldn't be soldered to the sheild of one of the pots because these are active pickups, right?

The red wire from the battery should go both red wires of the EMG pickups.

I think that about covers it...unless I'm wrong. The people who worked on it, they had the bare and white wire from the EMG pickups just soldered to the shield of volume pots. So, white wire and bare wire from the 81 EMG was soldered to the white wire and bare wire from the 85 EMG which was soldered to the shield of the volume pot...

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

Here's the diagram I was going to follow. Someone else with the same setup seemed to have success with it. At first, he couldn't switch pickups, but it turned out his three way switch was bad, so after he replaced that with an blade type (I think that's the type in here), everything just worked.

[Ragged]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

Just take it to another shop Spork. Thats the best you can do.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

Well, from that picture that I posted, the last one, I almost got it completely done, following that picture. It doesn't seem like there's really much to these. The switch just selects which pickup to use, the neck (85), the bridge (81), or both. The battery powers the pickups. These are passive pickups (I learned that :-) ) so they use 25K pots and the ground from the bridge should NOT!!! be hooked up, although it was hooked up previously.

I got all the wires ran except for the tone pot. Not sure how to hook that up. From the picture there, it looks like I just tie that one pad into the vole pot's pad. The problem is on this guitar, there's a wire going from there to the pot's shield, which also connects to the caps negative side...I'm thinking I should remove that wire from the shield and run it directly to the pot, like in the pic above this post...what do you guys think?

The next shop is around 100 miles round trip. There was a really good one 25 miles or so away but they're gone now.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

EMG 81 85 are active humbucker pickups and the pots should be 25K and long shaft for the Les Paul. the wiring for these is not as the print above, go on line to EMG for wiring and the battery connections though jack plug that you say is floating? Hope this is of help Flocko

The website has the newer style, the quickconnects, with their fancy pots. I found these instructions, which are a bit different than what is currently setup:

https://cdn.badcaps-static.com/pdfs/...e1b4d00f85.pdf

And it's differen than how the guitar was originally setup. If you scroll to the bottom of that PDF, is that showing the battery is hooked up to the sleeve and not the ring?? That's a bit odd. I'm pretty sure the repair shop didn't mess with the jack at all...was this hooked up all these years incorrectly?

Thanks.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

They had this freaking guitar for over two weeks and we finally get it back. I got it all soldered up, they ordered the wrong freaking pot again! This one is physically too big to fit through the hole in the body and even if I enlarged the whole, the knob won't fit on it!

I guess at this point in time, even though I resoldered it just right (I think I got it right), I'm going to make the trip on Tuesday to Soundworks up in Ithaca (100 mile round trip). Man, sooooo disappointed!!! Thanks for the help though guys.

[flocko]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

First the jack socket should be a stereo one? when the mono lead is plugged in the neg battery contact is made through the sleeve and what would be the left hand channel connector. I think your trip will save you a lot of head scratching, and if you do any damage to these EMG pickups they will cost loads to replace ( I am not a fan of these as it goes ) but a good call, make that trip and have a safe one. Flocko

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

First the jack socket should be a stereo one? when the mono lead is plugged in the neg battery contact is made through the sleeve and what would be the left hand channel connector. I think your trip will save you a lot of head scratching, and if you do any damage to these EMG pickups they will cost loads to replace ( I am not a fan of these as it goes ) but a good call, make that trip and have a safe one. Flocko

Thanks Flocko. I don't know how to tell if the jack socke is stereo or mono. Audio stuff really isn't my forta.

I'd think with any guitar, it'd be mono, wouldn't it? I mean, the amp they hook into, or the stack or head or whatever you call it, there's usually only one stack. You wouldn't really benefit from stereo, would you?

Thanks for trying to help. We now have two places in Ithaca. One was suggested by a friend of ours who's a muscian. He takes his guitars there and they open at noon today. I'm going to call them and see if they're qualified to work on this.

You seem to know a lot about these types of guitars. Is there any quesions I can ask these people to see if they're actually really qualified? If Marich didn't mess things up like they did and just ordered a replacement pot for me, I could of had this thing fixed a long time ago. I don't want to send it somewere and have it come back even more damaged now. I think those EMGs go for around 99$ a pop!

Thanks!

[flocko]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

You need a stereo jack socket in the guitar. the incoming plug is mono going to the amp the act of plugging it into the socket shorts the sleeve and the left hand channel contact making a switch to turn on the pickups , as soon as the plug is removed so is the battery power. I would think if they hold the pot in stock (25k long shaft) and do guitar tech work and EMG pickups you should be good to go, after the work is done get them to demo it to you though an amp,most will only be to happy to show of there skills Flocko

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

You need a stereo jack socket in the guitar. the incoming plug is mono going to the amp the act of plugging it into the socket shorts the sleeve and the left hand channel contact making a switch to turn on the pickups , as soon as the plug is removed so is the battery power. I would think if they hold the pot in stock (25k long shaft) and do guitar tech work and EMG pickups you should be good to go, after the work is done get them to demo it to you though an amp,most will only be to happy to show of there skills Flocko

Thanks Flocko. It's in better hands now, that's for sure! The guy really knows what he's doing as well. He said he'd personally work on it. I think he owns the shop. He said he's been working on EMGs since the 80's I guess. He knew right away that they used the lower impedance pots, the physically smaller ones, etc. He said he even had a few in stock. I asked him to replace the tone as well. Gonna cost around 75$ I guess, which really sucks, maybe even more. Originally, it was a 5$ fix. If I had just done it myself instead of putting it in the hands of Marich Music, I would have been fine. They had no idea how to rewire it. They just unsoldered the wires and tried remembering how it went.

I didn't need to know anything about guitars to fix it. If I had the replacement jack and had the broken pot off, I would have just drawn a diagram or took pictures of where all the wires went so I could just put it back together the way it came, you know?

[rhomanski]

Re: Epiphone Les Paul Custom Prophecy Guitar and broken volume pot.

My Brother bought three of them Tony Iommi Gibson guitars. He brought one to me a few years ago I opened it up and the jack contact was bent over and soldered to the nearest pot on the back of it. Plugging it in and pulling it out had stressed the solder enough to break it. I soldered a wire between the two and gave it back to him.