Duncan, Dimarzio mixed together...

[ztevie]

If I have a Dimarzio H-S-H, 5way switch equipped guitar and would like to replace the bridge humbucker with a Duncan, will it go right in without swapping hot and so forth? Or is it not possible? I'm talking about having hum cancelling and in phase in all positions of course.
Looks like this:
Position 1: Bridge humbucker
Position 2: Bridge split with middle single coil
Position 3: Bridge split with neck split
Position 4: Neck split with middle single coil
Position 5: Neck humbucker

I'm sure it won't go straight in and work bit is there any way to do this without turning the magnet around?

 

[swissmountain]

Re: Duncan, Dimarzio mixed together...

If the guitar came stock with DiMarzios the Duncan should have the same magnetic polarity. Of course you need to observe the correct wiring code for the Duncan.

The PRS pickup sets designed to work with the 5 way rotary selector have the magnet on the neck pickup reversed. Bridge pickup is standard magnet orientation.

And flipping the magnet is rather easy - apart from taking the pickup out of the guitar to be able to work on it and putting it back after the magnet flip is done, no soldering is required.

 

[ztevie]

Re: Duncan, Dimarzio mixed together...

Thanks for the answer!
Yeah, I understand I have to use the right wiring code for Duncan compared to Dimarzio.
This is a guitar perwired like this from the factory. (Vigier)
But i still wonder if it'll work just to replace it and observing colour code?
I saw somewhere that Duncan and Dimarzio have identical polarity but the winding is ccw vs cw... What consequence does that make? If you look here: http://www.skguitar.com/SKGS/sk/Pickup color codes.htm

 

[swissmountain]

Re: Duncan, Dimarzio mixed together...

If the polarity is the same but the winding direction is different the polarity of the pickup should be different. That means that the Duncan humbucker could be out-of-phase with the stock middle pickup in #2 and with the split neck pickup in #3 if you follow the wiring code exactly.

However, if the magnetic polarity is correct, any out-of-phase-ness (is that a word?) can be corrected by changing the wiring slightly.

For example: if you now have the DiMarzio bridge wired red to hot, black/white to split and green to ground, the direct Duncan equivalent wiring would be black to hot, red/white to split and green to ground. If it's now out of phase with the others, reverse black and green. If you now have the wrong bridge coil active in the split mode (you will notice that by the fact that it now either hums or sounds weird), you should wire it Red to hot, green/black to split and white to ground. You then should have the correct coil active in split mode.

 

[ztevie]

Re: Duncan, Dimarzio mixed together...

Ok got it, thanks!
I'll try it if I decide to swap pickup.