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cheapie humbucker wiring help!

Posted by Johannes Eriksson on March 18, 2012 at 6:12pm in Building Secrets, Tips, Advice, Discussion


Hi all

I've bought a 'hot rail' type humbucker on ebay, a cheapie from hong kong, I know very little about pickups but to know what to do with it I need to figure out which wire is the start and finish of the winding right? The colours on the wires seem a bit strange, from the 'north' coil there's black and yellow and from the 'south' coil there's white and red, this doesn't seem to correspond to any standard pickup setup even if you substitute the yellow for green on here:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/schematics.php?schematic=color_codes

the wires coming fom the top of the pickup are black on one side and white on the other, is that a clue? Is there a left and right convention? I'll be using another single coil pickup as well, what happens if I end up guessing and wiring the humbucker 'backwards'? Will that mean that the humbucker and single coils will be 'out of phase' or is that something else?

Attaching pictures, they will probably make more sense than my rambling...

Black, yellow, white, red:

White on this side:

Black on this side:

Cam0Pic12-03-18_22.08.23.jpg

Cam0Pic12-03-18_22.08.06.jpg

Cam0Pic12-03-18_22.08.13.jpg

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Replies

  • Lester Harper March 23, 2012 at 11:52am

    I love the hot rail pick ups I wired them into my strats but never on a cbg man. I would love to hear what it sounds like when finished. Good luck

    • Mungo Park > Lester Harper April 8, 2012 at 11:19pm

      This video helped me to figure out the same problem, had to watch it about 3 times but that was just me and might be to much info for the question. Excellent video for the newbie.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UfxQBhqen8

                Cheers Ron.

  • David L. March 19, 2012 at 8:46am

    Hi,

    I have just wired a similar one into my last CBG

    http://www.cigarboxnation.com/photo/front-finished

    I also had a spare one so not sure how exactly the coils are wound inside but on the multimeter they run

    Yellow to Black

    White to Red

    So It is something like this

    305792037?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024

     

    Comparing to Seymour duncan

    SD = Blade

    Black = Yellow

    White = black

    Red = Red

    Green = White

    I have wired 3 of these types so far all with the Esquire wiring

    http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/schematics.php... 

    and been really pleased with the results.

    Series = good

    Parallel = bit weaker but slightly more treble

    Split = amazing surprise - rock monster (I have split normal humbuckers and just got a quieter output but this has an output boost and it did the same on all 3 I wired this way.  I did read others on the SD forums got similar results on coil tapping blade pickups but haven't been able to find out why apart from this which doesn't give a detailed reson http://www.andersonguitars.com/support/split.cfm)

    • Johannes Eriksson > David L. March 23, 2012 at 10:39am

      Hi, thanks so much for this info, I wired this as a normal humbucker in series (I think): 

      Yellow--hot

      Black--link

      Red--link

      White--ground

      The result I got is low output and thin sound as compared to the 'bridge' single coil pickup, the opposite of what I expected, as to be pretty much unusable. The other pickup is better quality I think, but there is a REALLY significant difference in sound, could this be just due to the quality or must it be my wiring gone wrong? The sound sounds like the description of an 'out of phase' sound, thin, nasal, weak, so I think I'm going to try to link the two coils the other way round, so:

      Yellow--hot

      Black--link

      White--link

      Red--ground

      If that doesn't work I'm not sure what to do...

      ...confused...

      • David L. > Johannes Eriksson March 23, 2012 at 11:19am

        If you rewire like that it should give you the humbucker in series.

         

        If you are able to  try connecting yellow to +  black only to - that will give you the cut coil louder sound

        and

        yellow and white to + red and black to - will give you the parallel sound

         

        I think you wired them out of phase first time which cuts some of the sound wave - is it a bit of a quacking sound?

         

        I think these are brilliant little pickups.

  • The Phrygian Kid March 19, 2012 at 7:41am
    No it should mix fine with another pup. There's lots of interesting stuff you cando even without another your right series is how buckers work but if you put em in parallel youll get another useful hum canceling sound which will be less powerful like the between positions on a fender so you might wanna put a switch fr that for example. Another interesting possibility is a volume control for one of those coils only so rather than just tapped or not you can have degrees in between a single and a bucker
  • The Phrygian Kid March 19, 2012 at 7:00am
    Hi. Unfortunately there's no real standard that manufacturers follow for four conductor buckers. The thing to know is that the two coils are wound in reverse direction to each other and opposite magnetic polarity to each other as well. Hopefully you can visually identify which end of the coil is coming and which is going. By convention the inside (beginning) of the coil ought be the ground and the outside or end of the coil ought be considered the hot but it doesn't really matter so long as you treat both coils the same way.
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