#1 resource for Cigar Box Guitars, Free Plans, How-To, Parts & More!

Soldering/grounding plan

See attached image: My buddy gave me an old humbucker that he traded out on one of his instruments and I want to build it in to a 3-string CBG. The CBG will not have a toggle between two pickups so I plan to ignore the red wire. Is that a good plan?

I plan to go black-to-black and white-to-white on a jack that has been laying around. What is the best way to deal with the green ground wire? I have not done much soldering in the past, usually using CBGitty harnesses so I have not done grounding before.

1 member likes this

Attachments:

humbucker.JPG, 1.5 MB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gus K on November 26, 2019 at 2:58am

You will need to use the red wire. Note a humbucker is actually 2 pickups. Here's a pic from another member.

Permalink Reply by T-Gripped on November 26, 2019 at 3:01am

VERY HELPFUL! Thank you Gus! And my thanks to the member who initially posted this. Onward!

Permalink Reply by James Pobog on November 26, 2019 at 9:47am

Since I'm 1. new at this and 2. not good at electronics, my brain has to think about this stuff like plumbing. So when I see a humbucker, I can think of it in a couple ways. 1.Two single coils, switching between them 2. Two single coils as above, but add a third position to the switch where they're both on 3. Both on all the time, so the flow is north coil 'in', to north coil 'out', north coil 'out' connected to south coil 'in', to south coil 'out' to jack. In other words, north coils 'out' is south coils 'in'. North coil 'in' is from the pup, south coil 'out' is to jack. Ground is ground. Test the wires until one has continuity to the pup metal body, that's ground.

Is that right?

Permalink Reply by Gus K on November 27, 2019 at 3:30am

Worth a read.

https://www.seymourduncan.com/faqs/what-are-series-and-parallel-wiring

Permalink Reply by T-Gripped on December 2, 2019 at 4:26am

Gus - can you share a link where to find these? As it turns out, my freebie humbucker only has 4 wires coming out. Red, White, Green, and bare: no black. Hoping to find a diagram for it.

Permalink Reply by Gus K on December 2, 2019 at 6:49am

Well I guess that pic can be confusing, you can see the grey was drawn in, And color codes are not all the same. But it looked like this one.