Gibson quick connect question - north and south start vs finish

[Seashore]

My 2014 LP Classic has Gibson's quick-connect system. Convenient until it's not. I tried wiring a quick connector onto another humbucker to swap bridge pickups a while back and got a thin, noisy sound in series. I just checked the pickup with different wiring and it's fine; I definitely had the quick connector wired up wrong. I just now noticed a discrepancy between the diagram I used for the quick connector and the Duncan wiring diagram.

Here's the diagram I used:

And here's the Duncan wiring chart:



The diagram I used has the north finish as the hot wire on the bridge pickup. The Duncan diagram has north start as hot. Would this account for the crappy thin sound I heard? If I make sure that north start is going to the "hot" pin on the connector and that north and south finish are going to the "series link" pins, would that set things right?

[beaubrummels]

Looks like the bridge is reverse wired. I would have done them both the same. Unless you're trying to get tricky and make them hum-cancelling when split? I don't think it will work unless you flip a mag or one of them is a RWRP pickup?

I seem to recall on some models Gibson had one of the pickups RWRP or something so that they hum-cancelled when split, but I never owned one like that so I don't know for sure.

Someone else can answer this better than I. I haven't messed with reverse wiring humbuckers and flipping mags for this purpose.

[Seashore]

Thanks man. I just took a picture of the original connector and it's wired up differently from the diagram:


From top to bottom, it's South finish, North start, North finish, South start, ground. Still has North finish instead of start in the position labeled as "hot" on the diagram, but the diagram has nothing to do with what's actually here. No wonder it didn't sound right. I guess I should have just taken this out, had a close look, and followed what's actually there to begin with.

[Seashore]

I'm a little stumped as to what I've been looking at. That photo above is the connector from a Duncan 7 string JB that came stock with the guitar. North finish is clearly going to the "hot" pin in the middle. The pickup I'm wiring in is a Bare Knuckle Warpig. I just connected all my coil starts and finishes according to the wiring on the connector, and once again it sounded like garbage - thin, bright, noisy, almost like a single coil, except the single coil split sounded fine when I pulled the pot up.

So I took it out and redid it (without a split) as I would normally wire up a humbucker - north start to hot pin, south start to ground pin, bare wire to shield pin, connect the other two and tape them off. And voila, it works fine and sounds right, although the coil split obviously isn't working.

Glad I got a normal sound out of it but I don't understand what was going on before.

[morrissey007]

Thanks man. I just took a picture of the original connector and it's wired up differently from the diagram:


From top to bottom, it's South finish, North start, North finish, South start, ground. Still has North finish instead of start in the position labeled as "hot" on the diagram, but the diagram has nothing to do with what's actually here. No wonder it didn't sound right. I guess I should have just taken this out, had a close look, and followed what's actually there to begin with.

I disagree! This is not how my Gibson Burstbuckers are wired. It is Red=North Start, Black=South Start, White=North Finish, Green=South finish.
So to convert from Gibson (first colour) to Seymours (second colour) it is Red =Black, White=White, Black=Green, Green=Red

[Seashore]

I disagree! This is not how my Gibson Burstbuckers are wired. It is Red=North Start, Black=South Start, White=North Finish, Green=South finish.
So to convert from Gibson (first colour) to Seymours (second colour) it is Red =Black, White=White, Black=Green, Green=Red

What are you disagreeing with? This isn't a Gibson pickup, it's a Duncan. Reverse your color conversion, you'll see we're saying the same thing.