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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on September 5, 2019 at 6:10pm

It's easier than you think. If you look you'll see two of the wires soldered and taped together. Just ignore them. They are the two wires you don't have. For the rest of it you'll see a hot wire, ground and shield. Ground and shield always go to ground. So even if you don't have a shield wire your ground will still go to ground. 

Those extra two wires are for doing coil taps, phasing and all the other fancy stuff most people don't use or need. 

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Permalink Reply by Poorness Studios on September 6, 2019 at 1:14am

It's not uncommon for a humbucker to have 4 wires (because its essentially two pickups in one - north coil and south coil), though some only have 2 wires. As Cause the Blue rat stated, in a "normal" humbucking configuration, 2 of the 4 wires are just connected together so the currnet goes through both coils. You'll only need all 4 wires if you're planning to do coil splitting (a more advanced wiring technique).

Unfortunately, there's no standard color code as to which wire is which). Seymour Duncan has a great diagram that shows the color codes by pickup manufacturer.

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Permalink Reply by James Pobog on September 6, 2019 at 1:54am

OK, each p/u has 2 coils, a cream color and a black. The outer wire insulation is black on one p/u and red on the other. Then inside the outer insulation there are two wires on each, a white and a bare ground.

So do I just treat it like a single coil (like Shane does the "Gold Foil" p/u on the Lap Steel?

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Permalink Reply by James Pobog on September 6, 2019 at 2:22am

Would these work? The double setup is single coil (I think), so both setups seem to be 2 conductor.

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on September 6, 2019 at 6:46am

Yes they will both work. But the pickup with only a volume is not recommended. Better to have both volume and tone. Even if you always run the tone all the way up. 

On the IronGear diagram their showing you the grounds without showing were to go with them. Typically the pickup grounds will go to the ground on the switch. That ground will go to the back of one of the pots. A ground wire will go from the back of that pot to the other pot. Then from the back of that pot to the output jack. You will also need a ground from the output jack to a metal bridge. This completes the ground circuit. 

The idea of grounding is to have everything grounded only once. 

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Permalink Reply by James Pobog on September 6, 2019 at 7:16am

Exactly what I need to know.

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Permalink Reply by James Pobog on September 6, 2019 at 10:18am

Blue Rat, is this what you are saying? If so, I think i can do that.

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on September 6, 2019 at 6:31pm

Thats pretty! Yep that'll do you just fine. 

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Permalink Reply by Poorness Studios on September 6, 2019 at 5:52am

Any chance you can post a pic of what you've got? That may help.

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Permalink Reply by James Pobog on September 6, 2019 at 6:00am

Pulled this from Amazon, but this is the unit. the other is the same except the insulation is black instead of red.

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Permalink Reply by Poorness Studios on September 6, 2019 at 6:14am

As far as I can tell that just looks like a standard 2 wire humbucker, so yeah... just treat it like any two wire pickup. The insulated wire is hot and the bare wire is ground.

So, yes... you would follow the Seymour Duncan wiring diagram (1 Humbucker, 1 Volume) you posted above. It would be easy to add a tone pot if you wanted to.

https://st6.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3540870331?profile=...

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Permalink Reply by Poorness Studios on September 6, 2019 at 6:27am

If you wanted to add a tone pot, you'd wire it like this. Except their black wire would be your bare wire. Other than that you'd follow this idea. Make sense?

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