The Ellis Guitars Easy Board makes guitar wiring and pickup swaps solderless.
If you’ve ever paid over $100 for a simple pickup swap, waited a week or two for a shop to replace a bad pot, or avoided modifying your guitar because you didn’t want to break out the soldering iron, there’s a good chance the Ellis Guitars Easy Board was designed with you in mind.
The Easy Board is a compact, completely solderless wiring system for electric guitars and basses. Once it’s installed, you can make many common wiring changes using nothing more than a screwdriver.
For this review, I installed the Easy Board in my Kiesel Vanquish 7-string and used it to swap between several Vitus Pickups, including the brand-new Vitus Raven, a pickup I had the opportunity to collaborate on.
The result is a guitar wiring system that doesn’t necessarily change your tone – but it can dramatically change how comfortable you are with modifying your guitar.
What Is the Ellis Guitars Easy Board?
The Ellis Guitars Easy Board is a no-battery, completely solderless wiring hub for electric guitars and basses.
The basic idea is simple: instead of soldering every pickup, pot, switch, output jack, and other connection together inside your guitar cavity, you connect the various components to clearly labeled terminals on the Easy Board.
Once the system is installed, future modifications can be performed by loosening and tightening screws rather than reaching for a soldering iron.
That makes something like changing a pickup significantly less intimidating, particularly for players who aren’t comfortable working with guitar electronics.
What Problem Does the Easy Board Solve?
A pickup swap sounds like a relatively simple modification, but it can become surprisingly inconvenient.
Depending on the guitar and the shop, you could spend around $100 or more to have a pickup installed. If a potentiometer fails, you may have to leave your guitar at a repair shop while you wait for the work to be completed.
Doing the work yourself can save money, but traditional guitar wiring requires soldering in a small, cramped cavity. A bad solder joint or incorrect connection can leave you troubleshooting the guitar instead of playing it.
The Easy Board removes much of that friction.
Instead of soldering directly to individual components every time you want to change something, you can connect the wiring to the board and make future changes through its screw terminals.
What Can You Do With the Easy Board?
The Easy Board isn’t limited to simple pickup swaps. It supports a variety of common guitar wiring modifications.
- Swap pickups without soldering
- Replace volume and tone pots
- Experiment with push-pull coil splitting
- Change output jacks
- Swap tone capacitors
- Experiment with pickup phasing
- Modify different wiring configurations
The board includes clearly labeled connections for the neck pickup, bridge pickup, three-way selector, output, ground, volume, tone controls, and coil-splitting connections.
There is also a dedicated capacitor-swap area, making it easier to experiment with different components in the tone circuit.
There Are Two Versions
Ellis Guitars offers different configurations of the Easy Board depending on the wiring layout of your instrument.
The system can accommodate a traditional two-pickup setup as well as guitars using configurations such as two volume controls and two tone controls, making it suitable for a wider range of instruments.
The Easy Board Has a Small Footprint
One of the biggest concerns when installing something like this is whether you’ll actually have enough room inside the guitar cavity.
Fortunately, the Easy Board has a relatively small footprint.
For this installation, I was working with the relatively compact electronics cavity of my Kiesel Vanquish 7-string. Despite the limited space, the board fit inside without a problem.
That’s important because a solderless wiring system isn’t particularly useful if it requires completely redesigning the electronics cavity to accommodate it.
Who Is the Easy Board For?
The Easy Board is particularly appealing to a few different types of guitarists.
DIY Guitar Builders
If you enjoy building or modifying guitars but don’t want to constantly deal with soldering, the Easy Board gives you significantly more flexibility when experimenting with electronics.
Road Techs
For technicians who need to get instruments repaired quickly, eliminating soldering from common wiring changes could potentially save considerable time.
Players Who Like to Experiment
This is probably the biggest appeal for me personally.
Once you’re comfortable with the system, changing a pickup or experimenting with different wiring configurations becomes much less intimidating.
You’re more likely to try something because the process doesn’t feel like a major project.
Installing the Easy Board
For my installation, I decided to completely rebuild the electronics in my Kiesel Vanquish 7-string.
Rather than trying to integrate the Easy Board into the existing wiring, I removed the pickups and wiring and started from scratch.
My configuration consisted of a push-pull volume control, three-way selector, and barrel-style output jack.
I prepared the wiring for each component first, leaving the appropriate wire ends available to connect to the Easy Board.
Preparing the Wiring
The preparation is still the part of the installation that requires some soldering if you’re building your own harness from scratch.
For my setup, I had three wires coming from the volume control. The push-pull section had additional wires for the coil-splitting functionality, while the three-way selector and output jack each had their own connections.
Grounding is also important.
I retained the existing ground connection to the guitar’s bridge and also connected the system to the volume pot to ensure everything was properly grounded.
If you don’t want to do any soldering whatsoever, pre-wired harnesses are also available, including options from Ellis Guitars and third-party sellers.
Connecting Everything to the Easy Board
Once the wiring was prepared, the installation became considerably simpler.
Each connection on the Easy Board is clearly labeled, so the wires can be inserted into the appropriate terminals and secured with screws.
There are dedicated connections for the:
- Neck pickup
- Bridge pickup
- Three-way selector
- Output
- Ground
- Volume
- Tone controls
- Coil splitting
- Capacitor
That labeling is important because it takes much of the guesswork out of the installation.
How Fast Is a Pickup Swap?
This is where the Easy Board really starts to make sense.
For the pickup swap, I loosened the strings enough to access the bridge pickup, removed the screws, pulled the existing pickup out, and disconnected its wiring.
I then installed the new pickup, routed the leads back into the cavity, and connected the wires to the Easy Board.
The wiring was secured simply by inserting each wire into the appropriate terminal and tightening the screw.
Once everything was connected, the pickup could be secured back into place, the wiring tucked into the cavity, and the guitar put back together.
There’s no soldering involved in the actual pickup swap.
Vitus Pickups: Four Different Voices
To really put the Easy Board through its paces, I paired it with four different Vitus Pickups.
The lineup included:
- Vitus Lux Neck
- Vitus Lux Bridge
- Vitus Mammoth Bridge
- Vitus Raven
The Mammoth is designed for high-gain applications and delivers an aggressive sound that is intended to provide the character of an active pickup while remaining passive.
The Raven is particularly interesting because I had the opportunity to collaborate with Mark from Vitus Pickups during its development.
This review represents one of the first opportunities to hear the pickup in action.
The Vitus Raven Pickup
The Raven was one of the most exciting parts of this project for me because this wasn’t simply another pickup that was sent over for testing.
I had the opportunity to collaborate with Mark on the pickup, making the sound demo a chance to hear where that project ultimately landed.
Rather than judging the pickup based solely on specifications, I wanted to hear how it performed alongside the other Vitus models in actual musical contexts.
The sound tests cover both clean and high-gain applications, as well as a fully mixed track where the different pickups are compared throughout the performance.
Does the Easy Board Change Your Tone?
No – and that’s actually the point.
The Easy Board isn’t intended to be a tone-enhancing component. It’s a wiring system.
What it changes is how you interact with your guitar’s electronics.
Once the system is installed, you’re less likely to think of a pickup swap or wiring experiment as a major project.
That psychological difference is easy to overlook, but it’s one of the biggest advantages of the system.
Why Solderless Wiring Matters
For experienced guitar technicians, soldering isn’t particularly intimidating. But for many players, the electronics cavity is one of the least approachable parts of a guitar.
You may understand exactly what you want to change but still avoid doing it because you don’t have the tools, experience, or confidence to solder everything correctly.
The Easy Board removes that barrier.
It turns many common wiring changes into a mechanical process rather than an electronics project.
That means players can experiment more freely with pickups, pots, coil splitting, capacitors, and other wiring configurations without worrying about repeatedly soldering and desoldering tiny connections.
Is the Ellis Guitars Easy Board Worth It?
At approximately $49, the Easy Board is relatively inexpensive compared with the cost of having repeated wiring modifications performed by a guitar shop.
If you swap pickups frequently, build guitars, maintain multiple instruments, or simply enjoy experimenting with different electronics, that price becomes even easier to justify.
The bigger question isn’t whether the Easy Board makes a guitar sound better. It doesn’t need to.
The value comes from making your guitar’s electronics more accessible and easier to experiment with.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Completely solderless operation after installation
- Pickup swaps can be completed quickly
- Small footprint fits in compact cavities
- Clearly labeled wiring terminals
- Supports coil splitting
- Supports multiple wiring configurations
- Allows easy capacitor changes
- Makes DIY guitar modifications less intimidating
- No battery required
- Affordable at around $49
Cons
- Initial installation can still require soldering if building your own harness
- Requires enough room inside the guitar cavity
- May be unnecessary for players who rarely modify their guitars
- Pre-wired harnesses may be preferable for players who want a completely solder-free installation
Final Verdict
The Ellis Guitars Easy Board doesn’t change the sound of your guitar. It changes your relationship with your guitar.
That’s what I like most about it.
When you’re no longer worried about pulling out a soldering iron, burning yourself, creating a bad solder joint, or having to take the guitar to a shop, you become much more willing to experiment.
Want to try a different pickup? Swap it.
Want to experiment with coil splitting? Change the wiring.
Want to try another pot or capacitor? You can do it without turning the electronics cavity into a soldering project.
For DIY guitar builders, road techs, and players who like taking control of their own gear, the Easy Board is a genuinely clever solution to a problem that guitarists have dealt with for decades.
And at around $49, it’s an inexpensive way to make future modifications considerably easier.
The Easy Board doesn’t make modding your guitar simpler by removing the possibilities. It makes it simpler by removing the friction.
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