The ESP Guitar Company

+1. I've been curious about it. I've seen a few guitars that way. I'd think you may lose the "middle" toggle function though. Most people do it with a mini 2 way toggle deal. one OR the other ya know?

It is very possible, but you need seperate volume pots as the active's usually use 25K pots and passive's usually use 500K pots.

I wanted to keep the controls the same, if at all possible. If not, I guess I will change out both pick-ups. I'm wanting to put in a Bill Lawrence L500XL at the bridge pos.

Any suggestions on neck pick-ups that would compliment the BL?

I really don't use the neck pick-up and thought that it would be cheaper to just change the one.

In order to change them both, I would need to buy new 500k pots is that correct?
I do have this stuff in some guitars that I'm not using. I guess I could canibalize them..

Thanx Large!! I'll probably just go ahead and change them both. That looks to be the best way to go.

my last guitarist in my other band used an X2N bridge, EMG 81 neck, 2 volume, 1 tone.

If you don't feel like drilling extra holes, you can use stacked pots. EMG makes a 25K stacked one, Im sure you could find a 500K one elsewhere. Thus, you get a separate tone and volume per pickup.

"I just can't remember how ESP wires the ground to the bridge on the tune-o-matics"

Doesn't really matter. For active pickups, the bridge is NOT grounded at all. For passives, just tie it to any pot casing, or the selector switch ground.

If you buy your Seymour's or EMG's from guitarpartsdepot they'll give you wiring schematics for anything you need.

Runs the risk of reverse polarity shock as I said before. Actives are internally grounded, so by connecting your strings to ground, you can somehow damage the EMG's. This is plastered all over their site as well as their schematics. Im a programmer, not an electrical engineer, so I dont know all the gory details.

i never was told to install the preamp circuit when i ran a hot rail w/a hardwired 81. you just need to give each pup it own volume pot. actives run on 25k, then 500k for humbuckers, and a 2 or 3 way switch. you can use the ground wire for the passive. i'll hop on the old pc and scrounge up the schematic the emg tech made up for me.