How To: Fish a Jack Through Your Guitar

My pal Brandon needs to fit an endpin jack through the side of this guitar for an additional magnetic/soundhole pickup that he'll be installing, so I took some photos for him to show my process of fishing a jack through a guitar. Now you'll know, too.

I use kite string -- so first I tie it to a little metal bit of something and "drop" it through the new jack hole I've drilled. This way I can retrieve the string easily.

Modern endpin jacks usually have two little holes drilled in the end of the shaft. You can tie your string to that.

If you're putting a typical electric-guitar-style Switchcraft jack in, you can pass the string through the barrel of the jack and tie it off to the springy "tip" that makes contact with the cable and then just snip the string and let its remnant fall back into the body after you've got it installed.

I'm using a small ruler to hold the jack's shaft in place while I finagle the string off and put the washer and nut on. You can use a screwdriver or whatever, too, as long as it's shallow-enough to make fitting the bits on easy.

Here I've got the nut and washer on just loose but enough to hold it so that the jack won't fall back into the guitar body.

I use those same holes drilled in the side of the jack's wall to get an awl in there to keep the jack from turning as I tighten-up the nut with a wrench.

For Switchcraft-style jacks with no holes, you can stick a screwdriver into the jack's barrel and lodge it against one of the terminals or "tip" so that the jack doesn't turn when you tighten it up.