Replacing pickups in a Hollowbody

I did it once, had no idea what I was doing, hated every minute of it lol. That guitar was an Epiphone with quick connect wires and I ended up having to splice pickup wires into them to reuse the metric components.

I would probably try the rubber tubing method if I had to do it again, and just mentally prepare for two hours worth of frustration. I find that if I take my time and focus on doing each step right it's not so bad. I'd also get good components like Switchcraft and CTS so you hopefully never have to touch it again!

I did the same thing on my Sheraton. It worked out because the alpha pots actually still work well with zero issue. Same with the switch and jack. The 57 Classics I put in came from a friend and they had their leads cut short a while ago and had separate hot and ground wires wired to the braid and hot wire already so I just made a clean splice on the hot and ground on the pickups going to the controls. Cut the quick connects off and stripped the coax wire to the hot and ground and did my splice. Taped everything up and stuffed it back in the cavity.

I keep thinking about doing TV Jones for my Gretsch G5422TG but if I do go that route I'm going to do the tubing method and swap out all the components. The switch on that one is kinda iffy sometimes so if I did do that pickups, I'd just do everything.
 
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