You know the old saying, “There’s more than one way to wire a Les Paul.” Well, okay, that’s not the saying you’ve surely heard before, but we like it better.

The Gibson Les Paul, SG, ES-335 and countless other guitars use a two-pickup/four-pot setup. Traditionally, this consists of two dedicated volume controls and two dedicated tone controls. The tonal possibilities of guitars with two pickups and four potentiometers are almost endless, and the tireless tinkerers among us have experimented with different ways of wiring the pickups and potentiometers over the years. Some of these wiring modifications even have their own unique names.

There are two main wiring schematics for Les Pauls: ‘50s style and modern. We’ll cover those in detail and share a few other unique ways to shape the sound of your Les Paul or similar guitar. But before we get into Les Paul wiring diagrams, let’s get a few common questions out of the way.

What kind of wire do you use for a Les Paul?

Les Pauls are generally wired with 22AWG wire. The more traditional type is cloth-covered, braided 2-conductor wire, but you can use single-core 22AWG as well. Try to stick with the 22AWG wire—it’s best to do any wiring with wire that matches what’s coming out of your pickups (or greater) which is usually good old 22AWG.

What are the wires for on a humbucker pickup?

With a few exceptions—namely Les Paul Juniors and Les Paul Specials—Les Pauls have humbuckers. Humbuckers have either single-conductor or four-conductor wire. With single-conductor wire you have two wires—hot and ground. The hot wire (the “conductor”) will be wired to your corresponding volume potentiometer and the ground is often soldered to the back of the pot.

With four-conductor wire you have five wires, and with that comes more wiring options (we’ll get into that later). The color of each wire will vary by manufacturer, but generally, you’ll have north-start, north-end, south-start and south-end wires along with a ground. You can wire these pickups in the traditional manner where each pickup is associated with a single volume and tone potentiometer, or you can try fun and creative stuff like coil-splitting.

Les Paul Wiring Components

Before we can really dig into the different Les Paul wiring diagrams, we need to cover some basic vocabulary. Once you understand these terms, reading a wiring diagram will make a lot more sense.

Potentiometers

The word ‘pot’ is shorthand for ‘potentiometer.’ Structurally speaking, a pot has one large resistor inside with a start (AKA supply voltage, current in) and an end (AKA ground), which we see as the outer lugs on the casing of the pot. The start and end lugs don’t adjust anything when you turn the knob.

What does move is a bridge, which is connected to the middle lug (AKA wiper, current out). It moves over the resistor and acts as a bridge allowing the signal to reach the start or end. If it’s on the end (turning the knob all the way down) it bridges the signal to the ground, shorting the signal and creating silence. On the start (supply voltage, current in), it bridges the signal directly to the output of the pot without any signal going to the ground (volume all the way up). Every position in between allows some part of the signal to go to the ground, in essence lowering the volume.

When you’re wiring a guitar, you’re most likely looking from the bottom of the potentiometer. In this case, if you’re holding the pot so that the lugs are facing up (or away from you), ground should be on the left, wiper in the middle, and supply voltage on the right. You can swap those, but then your volume knobs will turn opposite the way you’re used to.

Toggle Switch

Unless they only have one pickup, like a Les Paul Junior, Les Pauls come with a three-way toggle switch. Like a potentiometer, a toggle switch has lugs. One side should have three lugs and the other should have two. For a Les Paul with two pickups, on the side with three lugs, the lug on one end is associated with the bridge and the one on the other end with the neck pickup. These lugs will be wired to the wiper terminal on the corresponding volume pot. The middle is the ground. The two lugs on the other side are often bent together and connected to the output jack.

Capacitors

Capacitors in pickup wiring are used as a high-pass filter. Most guitars use 0.022 µF capacitors, including stock Les Paul wiring. You may also experiment with .047 µF for a beefier sound (especially if you have brighter pickups) or .015 µF capacitors if you want finer high-end control. There are different kinds of capacitors (as in materials used) and some guitarists swear by certain types while others guitarists don’t fuss too much with the type of capacitor used. The most common materials are ceramic, paper-in-oil and polypropylene. If you’d like to learn more about how capacitors can affect your tone, we have an article for that.

Output Jack

The output jack is the last piece in Les Paul wiring. There are two types of output jacks: mono (TS) and stereo (TRS). With very few exceptions—think high-end Ernie Ball Music Man guitars—your guitar will have a mono output jack. There are two lugs on a TS output jack, one for the hot signal from the switch and one for grounding to the bridge. The ground is the inner lug and the hot is the outer lug.

Why did Gibson switch to modern wiring?

In the 1960s, Gibson switched from their traditional wiring schematics to what’s known today as modern wiring. As for why specifically Gibson made this change, we can only guess. It’s possible that guitarists of the time wanted something easier to dial in or preferred the “meatier” mid-range focus of modern wiring to the high-end-heavier ‘50s wiring. Regardless, guitarists can easily swap from modern to ‘50s and back again with a basic understanding of soldering and wiring pickups.

Understanding Our Les Paul Wiring Diagrams

Now that you understand what the wires in a Les Paul do and know the ins and outs of the components, the following Les Paul wiring diagrams should be easy to read. In our diagrams, we label each wire and specify what exactly goes where. The only thing to remember is that every potentiometer is shown from the bottom. That’s because it’s rare to wire a guitar looking down from the shaft of the potentiometer.

Wiring the Pickups to the Volume Pot

The ‘traditional’ way of wiring the pickups to the volume pot in Les Paul is to hook up the pickup’s hot signal to the outer lug of the volume control, and by using the middle lug (wiper/output) you can dial in how much of that volume you want. In this case, the pot works as a power divider.

But it can be done in a different way. If you hook up the “hot” of the pickup to the middle lug, the amount of load ‘behind’ the input is what causes the decrease of volume when you roll down your volume. This wiring is called the ‘independent volume mod,’ because in the middle position you are now allowed to dial in the exact tone you want without sacrificing volume. In theory this might sound neat, but it does take out a huge amount of your high end.

Les Paul Vintage Wiring vs. Modern Wiring

When we talk about Les Paul ‘50s wiring vs. modern wiring, we’re almost exclusively talking about how the tone cap is wired onto the lugs of the potentiometers. There may be other subtle differences depending on the specific guitar, but this is the major thing that sets ‘50s apart from modern.

Les Paul ‘50s Wiring

Les Paul ‘50s wiring is renowned for its almost unlimited tonal characteristics. There’s less separation between the pickups, but you get more high-end even as you turn down the volume and a highly interactive set of controls. However, you lose some volume when you turn down the tone pot.

Wiring your Les Paul in the ‘50s style is easy to do and understand. Briefly put, in ‘50s Les Paul wiring, the outer lug of the tone potentiometer is connected to the middle lug of the volume potentiometer via a 0.022uf capacitor.

Les Paul Modern Wiring

Les Paul modern wiring will maintain the overall volume better when you roll down the volume but at the cost of losing a bit of high end. If you have a bright pickup that may not seem that bad of an idea, because with less volume and the same amount of treble the tone might be too piercing.

The modern way to wire up a Les Paul is to hook the tone pot up to the outer lug of the volume pot, where the hot lead from the pickup is usually wired. It’s that simple.

Other Popular Les Paul Wiring Diagrams

We mentioned earlier that there are a lot of ways to wire up a Les Paul. The two most common are ‘50s and modern, but you can do way more, especially if your pickups have humbuckers with four-conductor wire.

Les Paul Coil Split Wiring Diagram

Coil splitting is one of the most popular modifications for any guitar with humbuckers. It enables you to turn your humbuckers into single coils and back again with the push-pull of a special potentiometer.

Unlike switching from modern to ‘50s Les Paul wiring, this mod requires two special push-pull (or push-push) potentiometers for volume, ideally 500k. You can use standard pots for tone.

Be sure to check the size of these special potentiometers—you’ll want pots with a taller design and a longer shaft so they make it all the way through your guitar’s maple cap. Also ensure that the shaft itself is the right size for your knobs—there are metric and imperial sizes for shafts and knobs, and getting a pot with the wrong shaft means your knobs won’t fit.

There are a few ways to accomplish a coil split with the above being fairly straightforward. On Seymour Duncan pickups the black wire is the north start and the hot output, and this gets soldered precisely the same as ‘50s and modern Les Paul wiring—to the voltage control lug of your pot. Your switch and output jack are also wired the same.

That’s where the similarities stop. The rest is still pretty easy, but you’ll need to pay attention to the solder points. First, the south finish and the ground are soldered to the corresponding middle lug on the push-pull pot. Then the north finish and south stop are soldered to the corresponding bottom lug as shown on the diagram. Wire up your tone pots and you’re done!

What Is Jimmy Page Les Paul Wiring?

Jimmy Page Les Paul wiring is a rather complicated type of Les Paul wiring made famous by, well, Jimmy Page. Instead of relying on multiple guitars with different wiring tricks, this wiring technique can create 21 unique tones—including 10 humbucking ones—using two four-conductor humbuckers, two single-pole, single-throw (SPST) and two double-pole, double-throw (DPDT) potentiometers.

We’ll include a wiring diagram below, but mainly we want to explain what Jimmy Page Les Paul wiring can do:

1. Split both humbuckers into single coils.
2. Route pickups (humbucker or single coils) in series or parallel.
3. Run pickups in or out of phase

We have a few versions of Jimmy Page Les Paul wiring in our library, but here’s an example. It’s a complex wiring job, so go slowly and triple check your solder points before you commit. You don’t want to be trouble-shooting and sucking solder when you should be enjoying your new wiring harness!

Looking for More Wiring Diagrams?

So far we’ve walked you through the basics of three Les Paul wiring methods: ‘50s, modern, coil split and Jimmy Page. But we haven’t even scratched the surface of what you can do with two humbuckers, two volume knobs and two tone knobs. We have a full library of wiring diagrams for guitars with humbuckers, single coils and more.