Help! Sterling Valentine Pickups

[sam01]

Hey guys, just hoping I could get some help on changing the pickups on the Sterling Valentine please?

I recently picked up a Valentine in Buttermilk at a great price and I love it to pieces, but I just want to swap the pickups and the new ones I have are braided.

For those of you that have changed pickups in this guitar; should I solder the metal braid to the volume or tone pot? When I first took the cover off it looked like it was soldered to the tone, but I've read that it normally goes to the volume, so I'm a bit confused. This is my first time changing pickups in a guitar so I want to make sure I do it right.

Thanks in advance for your help/input!

 

[msquared]

You didn't say what pickups you got (that helps) but usually the metal braid of anything is going to be a ground point rather than carrying a signal.

With that in mind, in theory it shouldn't matter which pot you solder the braid to. You are wanting to connect that to any ground point and if the guitar is properly grounded throughout it will work with either one.

I hate soldering to the pot case personally but guitar wiring is a bit of an art form on its own and everyone does it differently.

Let us know how it goes!

 

[sam01]

Sorry about that, I bought some Alegree Sea Smoke P90's. All soldering went went, however I somehow managed to make the middle selector position the neck pickup and the neck selector position the middle. Currently waiting to hear back from Sterling to see where I went wrong and how it should be soldered to the selector because now the middle position just suddenly stops working.
On the other hand, the pickups sound killer when they work haha!