Epiphone Dot Upgraded

I've succeeded in upgrading the electronics on my Epiphone Dot. This is one seriously fiddly job, and I don't recommend it for the faint of heard. That said, I'm extremely pleased with the results; I put in a set of Stewart MacDonald Parsons St. PAF-style humbuckers, and the difference from the stock pickups is enormous. It sounds sweet and fat and woody now, where it just sounded muddy before.

The details on how to swap out the electronics on a semi-hollowbody are better explained by others; I followed the excellent instructions online at MusicRadar, and also liked the ones at Mojoshout, and I definitely recommend these sources. I will, however, make a few extra comments, for the sake of anyone who wants to try this out for themselves.

The whole wiring rig has to come out through the lower f-hole, and then go back in again. That means a lot of fiddling about to get the components into the right places; the controls have to find their way back through their respective holes, and you can only reach some of them with your fingers. It takes some serious planning to make it work out properly. Don't try to do this whole job in one sitting.

1. The best tip from MusicRadard is to hold on to the 1/4" jack socket with a sawed-off plug. But it takes some doing. I bought a couple of cheap 1/4" plugs and destroyed one entirely with a hacksaw trying to figure out how to get the body off it--the whole thing needs to be smaller than the 3/8" hole that the jack sits in. The trick is to hacksaw vertically (lengthwise) from the back end of the plug; cutting it in half allows you to tear off the large body without destroying the inner pin that holds the plug together. I cut off the body, then soldered a couple of stiff wires on, about 14" long, which gave me lots of room to access the jack inside the guitar body.
2. I upgraded the stock pots to CTS ones; and didn't discover that the new shafts were bigger than the stock ones until I tried to re-assemble everything. So I had to enlarge the four holes the pots sit in... a bit daunting at first. The best technique turns out to be to use a drill bit with a tapered tip (3/8") and run the drill BACKWARDS. This takes a lot longer to cut through, but it avoids tearing up the top of the guitar. A little patience gives you nice clean holes. 
3. I made a little paper box by simply folding a letter-sized sheet of paper, then sliding (er, cramming) it through the f-hole and opening it up once it was inside, just underneath the four holes to be enlarged. When I drilled out the holes. the sawdust and crud fell into the paper box, rather than living inside the guitar forever more. Afterward, I folded the paper up and pulled it out of the f-hole. Neat and tidy.
4. The MusicRadar instructions suggest you tie threads onto all the components so you can pull them back up through the body holes. I found that having 4 or 5 threads in there just made for a tangle. You only really need to tie threads to the tone pots—the ones you really can't reach with your fingers. Having only two strings (I used dental floss) made it easier to keep everything organized. A small pair of needle-nose pliers is essential for this job, too.
5. Colour coding the wires and components was really helpful. I coded everything to do with the neck pickup red and everything for the bridge pickup blue—a pair of coloured Sharpies works nicely. When everything is upside-down and backwards, it's easy to get mixed up.
6. Last... on my first attempt, I used stiff, solid-core wire for all my ground connections. This made for a nice tidy wiring rig, but it was damn near impossible to position the components once I'd stuffed them inside. On my second attempt, I replaced some of the ground wires (particularly one between the two tone controls) with some more supple, flexible wire (and a little extra length). That gave me some extra play once I got the controls in, and I was able to get all the components positioned and pulled up through their holes without too much difficulty.

A lot of work, a couple of missteps, and a lot of patience... but when I plugged it in, it was all worth it after all! The stock pickups on my Dot were just crud. These StewMac ones are so much better, it's hard to believe it. The guitar sounds sweet and bright and cheerful now. I'm quite pleased with the combination of Alnico 2 (which is softer) for the bridge and Alnico 5 (brighter) for the neck; the bridge position is bright and airy--quite woody sounding--and the neck is fat and punchy.

My only worry, having put it all back together, is that the 1/4" jack socket is not super tight. StewMac's jack socket didn't come with a toothed lock washer (nor did the one that came with the guitar), and the shaft on it is just barely long enough to go through the wood and take a nut. So it's on, but it's not as solid as I'd like. A minor worry, but I wish I had more insight here.