Pickguard on, pickup in with @KiOgon loom installed.
We're in the home stretch now!
One odd thing that took me a bit to figure out. I suppsoe my cavity was a bit shallow, so while the output jack was working, as soon as i screwed down the pickguard, the sound cut out.
Turns out one of the pots was hitting the shielding and that was causing everything to cut out.
I shielded the shielding with electrical tape and the issue went away.