Celebrity wiring

[RNE228]

There's two numbers on each. They both have R1378819. The other numbers are partially soldered over on both pots.

Hi Robert,

I'm looking at the second photo and those look like CTS pots used in Gibsons, etc. from about 1985. What code do you see there?

[Greg_L]

There's two numbers on each. They both have R1378819. The other numbers are partially soldered over on both pots.

Those are definitely CTS pots. The "137" is code for CTS. The "88" means 1988. The "19" means 19th week. So those pots were made and swapped in no earlier than the Spring/Summer of '88. We know they were made in early May of 88. When they actually got put in is anyone's guess.

Generally speaking, you'd want the lower output pickup in the neck position. The string energy is much stronger at the neck joint than it is at the bridge. So a lower output pickup is usually put there because it doesn't need the "help". The hotter pickup is almost always a bridge pickup. This is just in general. You can do whatever you want.

As for the pots value, the value and type of taper has a lot of effect on how the pickups sound and react to tweaking the controls. The higher the value of the pot, for example 500K > 250K, the "brighter" the pickup will sound. Strats and Teles, with their searingly bright thin pickups, often have 250k control pots. Gibsons with big fat humbuckers often have 500k pots.

As far as wiring it up, I'll let someone else chime in on that. I'm no factory correct Mosrite wiring expert if you want it to be original-fresh. If you just wanna get it playing great, I'd say put the hotter pickup in the bridge, the milder one in the neck, and put some fresh CTS pots in there with an audio taper.

[panther]

Hey ! Robert;
Told you so.
Thanks Sarah for the detailed rapid response.
Dan

[RNE228]

Yes!
Thank you!
Robert

Hey ! Robert;
Told you so.
Thanks Sarah for the detailed rapid response.
Dan

[Sarah93003]

Hey ! Robert;
Told you so.
Thanks Sarah for the detailed rapid response.
Dan

My pleasure! I'm always ready to help a Celebrity fan.

[RNE228]

I wonder if the pickup on the left was a later replacement? As I mentioned, both have same Mosrite script on the front.

The pickup on the right with the foam and orange stuff and aluminum bar looks normal to me. The pickup on the left without all of that doesn't look right to me.

[Sarah93003]

I'm not an expert on pickups at all. I'm wondering if the "stuff" is missing from the back and if it can be replaced. Is that what they mean by "potted"?

[RNE228]

He is a pic of the front of the pickups; they are identical from the front/case. Also closer pic of the pot and cap wiring.

[Mr. Bill]

The wiring of the volume and tone pots is correct. The pots are replacements for the original Centralab ones.

As for the pickups, the foam backed one is original to the guitar, the second one with the metal baseplate is probably a Japanese pickup from a later import Mosrite.

The different values of the original pots are really just tolerance variations. They were both probably supposed to be 500K but through the randomness of picking two out of a few hundred pots they just seem to be far off from each other.