How do you know you installed PU correctly?

[scgmhawk]

I just swapped a stock humbucker from my Floyd Rose guitar to a GFS Fat Pat. There were more wires on the GFS pickup than the stock so I followed the schematic on the Seymour Duncan site (I believe GFS wires the same as SD). It sounds much better! I'm just curious, would it be obvious if I didn't wire it up correctly? Didn't properly ground? Would sparks be flying?!

Thanks alot!:dude:

[markb]

No sparks. It just won't sound right. GFS have wiring diagrams for their own colour coding on their site. If only pickup manufacturers could agree on wiring.

[duhvoodooman]

Two main things you have to watch out for:

1) If it's a four-conductor humbucker, it's quite easy to miswire it so that only one of the two coils is sending signal. In such a case, it will sound brighter and thinner than it would with both coils producing signal.

2) Even if you don't make that mistake, it's easy to wire it backwards, so that it's out of phase with the other pickup(s). In such a case, when you select a switch position that blends the pickups, it will sound thin and rather nasal in quality.

[Rocket]

Short answer... you'd know!

[just strum]

Short answer... you'd know!

Longer answer: you would know.

Seriously, get the diagram for the pick-ups you are installing, don't use another brands diagram.

I installed DiMarzio pick-ups using a SD diagram - WRONG!!! It resulted in a lot of wasted soldering (or on a positive side, provided extra soldering lessons).

I thought a humbucker, is a humbucker, is a humbucker - Wrong again!!!

[scgmhawk]

Thanks guys. I'm pretty sure I did it right!

[marnold]

Or you could be like me and wire it exactly right only to find out that my Seymour Duncan humbucker was out-of-phase with my Dimarzio single coils! Thankfully the Speedloader makes stringing/unstringing a breeze otherwise I would not have been a happy camper.

[bigoldron]

Or you could be like me and wire it exactly right only to find out that my Seymour Duncan humbucker was out-of-phase with my Dimarzio single coils! Thankfully the Speedloader makes stringing/unstringing a breeze otherwise I would not have been a happy camper.

That's what happened when I put my GFS Texas Special single coils and the Yamaha factory humbucker on my new Pacifica. I'm waiting on a new humbucker, which should be here any day. That'll get her cookin' and jukin'! :AOK:

[scgmhawk]

Excuse my ignorance, Matt and Ron, but what caused the pickups to be out of phase when you wired them correctly and what did you do to fix the issue? The only thing I think is odd now is that I get single coil hum in 2nd position now (didn't before) and I get a little hum from the humbucker. The only position that's absolutely quiet is 4. Strange? Do I have the same issue you had?

I also checked online and GFS does use the SD schematics, so other than guessing that the green wire needed to go to the switch, I did everything right. Since I bought the pickup a year ago, I don't have the wiring diagram anymore.

[markb]

Seymour Duncan has wiring diagrams. See the support section of www.seymourduncan.com

[marnold]

Excuse my ignorance, Matt and Ron, but what caused the pickups to be out of phase when you wired them correctly and what did you do to fix the issue? The only thing I think is odd now is that I get single coil hum in 2nd position now (didn't before) and I get a little hum from the humbucker. The only position that's absolutely quiet is 4. Strange? Do I have the same issue you had?
Well, you should have gotten bum in the second position before because the humbucker will not, well, buck hum with the single coil. That's pretty typical. The only ways to get around that are a) get noiseless single coils like I did, or b) figure out how to set up the five-way switch like Ibanez does so the humbucker is coil cut when in the second position. The second one could be a bit trickier since you'd need to figure out which coil was RWRP of the neck pickup.

WRT the out-of-phase issue, it's not too uncommon for pickups from different manufacturers to be out-of-phase with each other. Just like there is no standard for which lead should be which color, there is also no standard about which way the pickups should be wound, what magnetic orientation each coil should be, etc.

Thankfully the solution is very simple. I swapped the hot and ground leads on the humbucker, keeping the bare ground wire where it was (Duncans have that "extra" ground wire, my Dimarzios don't).

[red]

If you want to be absolutely sure that you've soldered the pickup on properly you need to buy a cheap digital multimeter with a continuity test. Failing that, any digital multimeter that can measure resistance is just as good - your resistance needs to be as close to 0 as possible and that means that there's continuity.

So you just put one of the metal ends on the ground wire coming out the pickup, and the other on the back of the pot you've soldered it on - if you have continuity, then the ground was soldered on properly.

If you didn't solder the signal wire properly you'd know, because the pickup wouldn't work (you'd hear nothing).

As for which wire goes where, you little pickup handbook or the manufacturer's website should tell you that. They should be color-coded.
If your pickup did not come with a leaflet telling you which wire goes where, you should try to contact the manufacturer and ask.
It is possible to connect the pickup in a wrong way, and even if no sparks will fly, it might not be what you want - 4-wire humbuckers are meant for potential coil-splitting, and it is possible that what you've wired is only a single coil from the humbucker. But then you'd have 60-cycle hum, so that would give that away.

Hope this helps...