4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

P

Petros

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Modified an Ibanez Artcore AF75T hollow body.

Pickups: I removed the neck pickup and replaced it with a Seymour Duncan Alnico 2 Pro. The SD is a 4-wire pickup. I used a push-pull pot to do a series/parralel split. I left the original Ibanez 2-wire bridge pickup in place.

Problems: Each pickup individually sounds fine. But there's an obvious thin, "ow" sound, out-of-phase tone when middle position is selected on toggle switch (i.e., both pickups are used together). First thing I tried was to simply cut the bridge pickup cable and switch the shielding and the (+) inner core wire to reverse polarity. This worked perfectly except for one problem: When I touch the humbucker cover there is now a noticeable hum. So, switching the wires as I did must have removed the chassis ground from the bridge humbucker.

These pickups are likely "incompatible" with each other as far as phase is concerned. I believe other than changing the electrical phase, it's possible to take the cover off the bridge pickup and reverse the magnet, yes? It's not an easy task, so somebody correct me please if I'm wrong. If I turn the magnet 180 degrees I can restore the pickup wiring and the pickups will be in phase and the chassis ground will be restored.

But if there's an easy way to just ground the humbucker cover (without creating a ground loop) with the 2-wire lead reversed please do tell.
 
Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

Have you considered reversing the A2P wiring instead? Might be your quickest solution since its 4 conductor with a separate ground.
 
Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

Swyse said:
Have you considered reversing the A2P wiring instead? Might be your quickest solution since its 4 conductor with a separate ground.
Click to expand...

I would have to remove the pots and wiring from a hollowbody and then replace them. That's not an easy task considering it took me about two hours to get the new pots and wiring in there.
 
Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

they should work fine together but they are currently wired out of phase. when swapping the shield to hot and center wire to ground im not surprised it was noisy since the shield grounds the base plate and cover if there is one. if you swap the green and black wires on the duncan things should be in phase (assuming you swapped the ibz pup back to the way it should be)
 
Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

Oh man.

That's really the only way to do it then isn't it? --to take out the wiring harness and switch the polarity on the 4-wire Seymour Duncan pickup and put the bridge pickup cable back as it should be (i.e., not reversed), even though the quick fix definitely worked, well sort of given I got the hum when I'm touching the pickup cover.
 
Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

I think because I've got a push-pull switch wired I can't simply reverse the Green and Black wires coming from the 4-wire Alnico 2 Pro neck pickup.

I've got the 4-wire Alnico 2 Pro connecting at a push-pull switch for series/parralel switching. So, shouldn't I leave where the Black and Green pickup wires are connected and make the Black wire go to ground and the Green wire go to the + lug of the volume pot? Otherwise, the configuration on the push-pull switch will be wrong, yes?

[Sketch removed]
 
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Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

The other way to look at it is that at the switch the wires need to remain in the proper pairs for each coil of the humbucker:

Black - North Start
White - North Finish

Red - South Finish
Green - South Start

So again, I don't see how you can just swap the Black and Green wires at the push-pull switch and the switch will remain operational for series/parallel connections of the two coils.
 
Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

Does the original bridge pickup have a braided outer sleeve? If so, did you swap that with the inner white cable? If so, you sent the ground to the hot, so you're going to get the buzz. If you remove the black wire from the braided sleeve, you won't get any sound from the pickup.

You will need to reverse the green and black wires of the Duncan. Doing so will not alter the mini toggle's function.
 
Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

Please excuse the quality of the sketch, but this explains my point about why you can't just swap only the green and black wires for the Alnico 2 Pro neck pickup and still preserve the function of the series/parallel switch:

IMG_2032%20edit1.jpg



NS = north start
NF = north finish

SF = south start
SS = south start
 
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Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

And BTW, this works.

I switched back the bridge pickup polarity as it should be (shield to shield, hot to hot).

There's no out-of-phase tone when both pickups are being used.

There's also no noise now when I touch the bridge pickup cover.

:cool:
 
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Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

glad it worked out!
 
Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

How about flipping a magnet?
Or installing a push pull to reverse electrical polarity so you can choose to be in phase or out of phase. I have 3 guitars with out of phase switching. Great if you are a Peter Green fan [emoji1360]


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Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

vinnie1971 said:
How about flipping a magnet?
Click to expand...

There was no need to flip the magnet on the existing Ibanez pickup, only switch the electrical polarity on one of the pickups, and since the Seymour Duncan Alnico 2 Pro is a 4-wire with its own ground wire, it made the most sense to swap wires there. I didn't want to crack open the Ibanez pickup (which is wax potted) and flip the magnet for fear of breaking something.

The out-of-phase tone when using both pickups, at least with these pickups, sounded too strange to my ears.
 
Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

out of phase usually sounds weird. if you have independant volumes you can get some cool cocked wah tones by lowering one of the volumes but its not something i or most people use often
 
Re: 4-wire Duncan and 2-wire Ibanez humbuckers incompatible with each other. Fix?

Two ways to fix if.

1) Reverse the hot and ground on the 4 wire pickup.

2) Flip the magnet over to reverse North/South on one of the pickups.


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