Starfire Bisonic pickup wiring to harness question

lungimsam

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Installing new v/blend /tone harness and pickups.
Since I cannot wire the pup leads to the harness pots while the harness is inside the bass body (since it is a semi-hollow body).
Which way would be best to connect pups to harness?
1. Wire up entire harness outside of bass then make the Bisonic pup leads long enough to come out of the bridge wire lead hole to the outside of bass and then solder pup leads to harness outside the body, then put the harness back in the bass cavity with everything wired together.
OR:
2. solder up the harness normally but add in 4 jumpers for the pickups (2 grnd/2hot) to be soldered to the pup leads after the harness is installed . These jumpers would be long enough to emerge from the F hole, along with the pup leads and can be joined outside the bass above the Fhole so that I could attach/remove the pup leads to and from the jumpers at will so I never have to remove the harness in order to install new pickups if I ever change pickups again.

If I do option 2, would I have to match the jumper wire to whatever comes from the pups or just use normal white and black push back wires for the jumpers?

Thanks for your advice.
 
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thornev

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First I have to understand what "solder up the harness normally" means. I can't imagine doing it any other way except outside the bass. I'm doing all the work outside the bass which makes it easy to test that everything works correctly before I commit the harness to inside the bass.
 

lungimsam

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Yes. Soldering all the connections outside the body except for pup leads to jumpers which would be done also outside the body but after the rest of the harness was installed. Then the pup jumpers and pup leads would be gathered up thru the f hole to the outside where they would be connected and then dropped back in thru the f hole
 
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thornev

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pup leads are soldered to pots so how can you do that without taking out the pots? I'm just missing something here. But it's OK. I don't have to know. Do what makes the most sense for you.
 

lungimsam

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Jumper wires.
Hot pup jumpers (from blend knob terminals) and ground jumpers ( from back of volume pot shell)
Imagine this:
My v/blend/tone Harness already installed but pup leads not connected yet. Pup leads have been stuck into body thru their respective lead holes in cavity when pups installed into their pockets. The hot and ground pup jumpers from harness then emerge from the f hole into space that then get connected, outside the body to the bisonic wires (also emerged from f hole). Then stick back into body.
 

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pup leads are soldered to pots so how can you do that without taking out the pots? I'm just missing something here. But it's OK. I don't have to know. Do what makes the most sense for you.
A clean soldering iron and some lead solder does not take a lot of heat. Make sure the back of the pot is clean, and it shouldn't take much time. I agree with 'sam, use a jumper wire off the back of the pot. You have four ground wires (foil shielded?) And that would be really annoying to solder. Use shrinkwrap or tape to make sure that connection doesn't make intermittent contact with the wiper, or you will get intermittent dropouts of the signal.
Don't ask me how I know...
 
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