Lindy’s Les Paul Wiring

Hey there! Today, we’re exploring the way Lindy likes his custom Les Paul® wired. Lindy’s favorite Les Paul is a Tommy Rodriquez Les Paul copy he designed himself, with a few special tweaks. Personally, I’m more of a Fender® guy, and Les Pauls never really spoke to me, but Lindy’s Les Paul copy is easily one of the best guitars I’ve ever played in my 30+ years of playing guitar. Let’s dig in to the guitar first before getting into the wiring!

The Guitar

Lindy’s Les Paul, designed by Lindy and crafted by Tommy Rodriguez, features a lot of Lindy’s favorite tweaks. First, the neck shape was carved by Lindy before the guitar was fully built, allowing Lindy to craft the neck to his liking. Second, Lindy designed the control placement to get the Volume Pot as close to his strumming hand as possible. Third, he added a belly-cut to make the guitar more comfortable and lighter. Lastly, he designed the wiring – and it’s a doozy!

Lindy’s Les Paul Wiring Diagram

Before getting into the diagram, let’s break down what this Les Paul wiring features:

• A master volume, and individual tone pots for each pickup
• A Push Pull Blender Pot with a Phase Reverse switch for flipping the phase and blending the tone
• Individual coil splits with a Partial Split resistor (which is perfect for the Pure P.A.F’s in the guitar).
• The ability to blend phase with Humbuckers or coil split Humbuckers – truly versatile.

Explanation of wiring:

To accomplish this wiring, we have to re-think how the pickups are wired. Again, this is not a traditional Les Paul diagram.

We route the neck pickup’s output to the neck tone pot first. The bridge pickup goes into the phase-reverse section of the push-pull blender before proceeding to the bridge tone pot. Finally, both tone pots feed into the push-pull blender, and the blender’s output goes to the 3-way toggle switch.

Notes:

1. One of the trickiest parts of this wiring is the Phase Reverse Push Pull Blender Pot. There’s a lot of wires jammed in there, and it’s hard to wire if you have traditional Fender cloth push-back lead. Also, study the wiring and make sure that terminal 2 goes to lug 1 of the Blender Pot (it’s shown by a small golden-colored jumper).
2. Note that the Push Pull Blender Pot has a 3/8″ Shaft. Most Les Paul’s need a 3/4″ Shaft. Lindy had to modify his Les Paul cavity to get the push pull Blender Pot to fit in his guitar.
3. Each pickup must have at least 3-conductor lead to coil split. You do not need the partial split resistor if you have high output humbuckers. If you don’t need Partial Split Resistors, replace them with a wire to ground.
4. You need a Push Pull Blender Pot to make the Phase Reverse Blender Pot section work.
5. We use 3-Conductor Lead as a traveler wire to the Toggle Switch. This keeps wiring neat and simple by wiring your Neck, Bridge, Shield, and Output all in one wire.

Well, that’s it! Pretty cool, huh? It’s definitely a tricky wiring setup, but incredibly worth it to have all of that versatility at your fingertips!