Support / Gretsch Hollowbody Vintage Wiring Diagram & Fitting Instructions

Removal

Find somewhere safe, dry and secure to place your Hollowbody guitar while you work on it.
If you are not changing the pickups, although this will be the time to do it if you are, you can leave the strings on, which will make testing easy later.
Remove the pickguard if your guitar has one.
Undo the nut for the jack socket
Remove the control knobs x 4 and the switch cap
Remove the 4 x pot nuts and washers and the nut for the switch
You now need to bring what is inside to the outside. Its best to put a protective cloth to stop the guitar surface getting scratched

Replacement

Working on the now external old harness, cut the bridge and ground wires from the pots
Cut the pickup wires leaving the wires as long as possible.
You should now be able to remove the harness away from the guitar.
At this point you may want to clean pot holes from where the old pots have been.
You will need to check the size of the holes for the pots as on some guitars they are drilled small for cheap electrical components. If they are small, the best way to enlarge them to 10mm to fit CTS pots, is to use a round file.
You are now ready fit the new harness.
From here everything is in reverse using the wiring diagram below.
Place the new harness on top of the guitar
Solder the ground bridge wire to the back of the new pots (refer to wiring diagram)
Solder the 2 pickup wires to the new pots (refer to wiring diagram).
Once this is done, you should test to make sure everything is working. Simply plug into an amp and strum a string.
You will now need to thread everything back into the guitar to the correct holes. Start with the jack socket, you may need a bit of fishing line to help you feed the jack into place, now everything else will follow. Take you time with this part so you don’t damage any of the components on connections.
Re-fit the control knobs and the switch cap.
Replace the pickguard if your guitar has one.

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