Question on pickup install

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Shreddy Mercury

Shreddy Mercury

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Are the bare wires supposed to have continuity with the pickup body? Also, is it ok in a dual humbucker guitar, if those 2 bare wires touch each other while running through the holes towards the control cavity?

The reason I ask is that I'm finishing up this Warrior re-wire where I took the Duncans with shoddy original wiring out and put in DiMarzios. I had to strip back most of the black rubber shielding so I could run 1 wire from each pickup towards the toggle switch cavity, and so that the pickups would actually sit down in their routes. I have all the wires run where they need to go but haven't trimmed any or made any terminations yet, but I wanted to do a test beforehand. I put my meter's probes on both of the bare wires and would get a beep depending on how I was holding the wires, so they're occasionally making contact when coming through the wiring hole from the bridge route towards the cavity. Then I put a probe on each wire and was getting continuity with the pickup mounting screw. If those bare wires are supposed to have continuity with the pickup, and it doesn't matter if they both touch, then I can move forward.

The reason I ask, if a little over a year ago, I had a luthier back in Maine do a fret job and he had to remove the neck pickup to have clear access to higher frets. He put it back in and it worked for a day or two, then no more output. Eventually, when I came home to visit, I had a local luthier friend look at it and he determined, that, due to shoddy original wiring and soldering connections, a wire from the switch, I think it was, was making contact with the neck pickup or a wire coming from it and killing the signal. He did some shielding with electrical tape on one of the wires and that fixed the problem.

There are 2 wires coming from the switch down towards the control cavity, one for hot and one for ground, and they are still insulated so I shouldn't have that problem again, I just want to double check before I move forward.
 
Yes, the bare wires are soldered directly on the base (should have continuity). And it's fine if the bare wires touch at any point because they all end up at ground. :cool:
 
It's all back together and works like it's supposed to! Now to test out how this guitar sounds with 2 lower output 36th PAFs. The one I paired with a Super Distortion in my Les Paul I redid a few weeks ago sounds pretty hot in the neck. At least hot and juicy enough that I actually enjoy using the neck for something other than leads only. After I tune and intonate this thing, we'll see how it sounds.
 
Careful!

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Question for your pickup experts. I usually solder the red and white wires together when I install a Duncan humbucker. I'm wondering, if those two wires are not soldered and taped off, what will happen? Will it affect the tone at all?
 
Oh my God, you just solved a mystery for me that's been bugging me for a long time.
 
I don't want to start a new thread, so I'll ask this here. I am trying to install a Black Winter into an old Fernandes. The Fernandes has 1 volume and 1 tone. The tone knob is a push-pull pot for coil splitting. The previous humbucker (bridge) was a Gotoh from the 80s that only has a red and black wire. The black was connected to the selector switch and the red was connected to what looked like the top round thing on the push pull pot. Anyway, I'm trying to figure out where the wires go on this push pull and the select switch. Does black go to the pickup selector, and the red and white go to the middle round thing on the push pull? I also don't know where the green and bare should be grounded to.
 
Black is hot - goes to volume pot lug
Red and white goes to coil split switch
Green and bare gets soldered to volume pot case
 
Black is hot - goes to volume pot lug
Red and white goes to coil split switch
Green and bare gets soldered to volume pot case

Thank you! Almost had it right, I just put the red and white to the ground of the coil split (oops). I'll fix that this weekend.
 
If the hot was on the switch, to keep it the same you would pit the black there for the hot. The red and white you can either tap with the push-pull to coil split, or just leave taped off (either way tied together).
 
If the hot was on the switch, to keep it the same you would pit the black there for the hot. The red and white you can either tap with the push-pull to coil split, or just leave taped off (either way tied together).

Ah, so if I don't want the coil switching, I can just wire the green and bare to the volume ground, and then leave those two (red & white) taped off?
 
Ah, so if I don't want the coil switching, I can just wire the green and bare to the volume ground, and then leave those two (red & white) taped off?
Yeah. The black is hot, the green is ground, and connecting the red and white just makes it a humbucker. If you do switch the red and white to ground, it makes it a single coil.

My other tip is the star pattern with grounds. Wire all of the grounds to the volume pot, so that the volume pot is the middle of a star. That way, if something buzzes, you know what ground is wrong.
 
I don't know what kind of wood they used in these old Fernandes, but this Black Winter pickup sounds amazing. Interesting, it has less gain in this guitar than in my green Strat. The Strat wood makes it sound a little warmer and fatter, but also an increase in gain. I prefer the tighter, crisp tone of the Fernandes with this pickup. But now I'm just wondering if the Strat's wood is really ideal for me. Can't seem to find the best pickup for that wood. An EGM85 would solve this, but I would prefer passive pickups if possible. Also, the Friedman sounds very different depending on the guitar / pickups. It really has more true Marshall tone with the Fernandes than the Strat. I'm still learning a lot.





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I don't know what kind of wood they used in these old Fernandes, but this Black Winter pickup sounds amazing. Interesting, it has less gain in this guitar than in my green Strat. The Strat wood makes it sound a little warmer and fatter, but also an increase in gain. I prefer the tighter, crisp tone of the Fernandes with this pickup. But now I'm just wondering if the Strat's wood is really ideal for me. Can't seem to find the best pickup for that wood. An EGM85 would solve this, but I would prefer passive pickups if possible. Also, the Friedman sounds very different depending on the guitar / pickups. It really has more true Marshall tone with the Fernandes than the Strat. I'm still learning a lot.





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You can always mess with the pickup height a little to fine a sweet spot. I've been doing that with my guitars lately. I'm fine tuning the pickup height on all of them to get around the same output. Granted, this works best when they are all similar pickups. In my case, they are all JBs or similar.
 

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