restore F-100 electronics to original state - long post

[PeaElAre]

I have an 81 F-100 Series II I bought about 20 years ago. has been my favorite guitar. My dad refinned it about 5 years ago. Since then something has been off about it in one way or another with regard to the electronics. Neck pickup wouldn't work as a humbucker (only when the coil was tapped/split did it work at all). I've had many folks look at it, try to repair it. A couple thought it was the switches and changed them out. A couple thought it was the wiring and jacked with that. Ultimately, the neck pickup was pulled and sent to Vintage Vibe and was rewound. Works like a charm. But in all the jacking with the wiring and switches, they're not configured properly anymore, neither are the tone pots.

Essentially, here's what I have, which isn't necessarily a problem, but I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with it:

1. Neck pickup works fine

• Bridge pickup works fine, but very sensitive to noise (i.e., trem bar squeaks, switch flicks, etc.)

• Volume is now neck pickup only and almost all or nothing; meaning, it's not an even taper if i wanted to back off a bit it has little effect or too much effect.

• Tone knob that used to be the high end rolloff is now bridge pickup volume. Works fine for that function.

• Tone knob that used to be low end rolloff is now master tone and works similarly to the neck volume, e.g., it's quite drastic in its changes, little taper, all or nothing.

The guitar is functional, but I'm having a really hard time vibing with it. It was perfect before the refinishing job, but I don't want to diminish the awesome job my dad did on it.

I pinged CLF Research a while back to see if I could send it to them to help me restore it but they deferred me to my luthier of choice. I guess I'm done working with folks who don't know about these guitars. I'm considering just gutting it and putting new pickups in it with a standard volume-tone-tone configuration, 3-way switching, and bypassing the other switches.

I wanted to see if anyone here has had any luck restoring an F-100 and was hoping to get some advice as to where to start. I'm in the Dallas area for geographic reference. I love this guitar and right now I don't spend much time with it.

Thanks in advance for any assistance, advice, good thoughts.

[Craig]

Perhaps doing the G-200 mod to your F-100, see: Parts to convert F-100 to G-200 wiring.
Also, check out this post: NGD: 1980 G&L F-100 Series I (Searching for F-100 Info).

Hope this helps.

[Danley]

Sounds like a candidate for a complete re-wire. Can you post pics of the wiring? There are wiring diagrams posted online & to this site. Is yours an active or passive model?

Good luck - It shouldn't be too difficult to get it back in working order.