davidfriede
New member
Several years ago I put a JB Jr in the bridge of my '86 MIJ Strat. It was the best thing I ever did! Love that pickup. But I still had the original pups in middle and neck, so after much deliberation I dropped in a Duckbucker in the middle and a Lil '59 in the neck - effectively now an Everything Axe set.
I followed the wiring digram on the SD web site for the Everything Axe set and wired up the Duckbucker in parallel. I found a huge drop in volume as soon as the Duckbucker was switched in (i.e. positions 2, 3 & 4) compared to the bridge and neck on their own. It was literally unusable - nothing I did could balance up the outputs between all the pickups and be a useable rig without fritzing around with volumes all the time. Raised/lowered pickups, pole pieces etc etc... Nothing worked.
After googling and reading a post in these forums, I learned that you can wire the Duckbucker in series - after I did that...BAM! Everything came together! All volumes balanced and positions 2 & 4 have that great strat quack which I've missed for so long (the JB Jr did not play that well with the stock middle pup, but I was not really using it at the time anyway).
So... my thing is... If the JB Jr and Lil '59 are higher output, why would SD suggest the Duckbucker be wired in parallel and have such a big discrepancy in outputs? On my guitar it was a disaster, but in my research on how to fix this issue, I see that there are lots of people that love it that way, or all the pup outputs are balanced in their guitars or something... But then I also see that some people hate the Duckbucker wired in series - I personally love it, so I suppose that it's a matter of personal taste. I don't understand how it works for some guitars and not others?
Just curious if someone smarter than me might know...
I followed the wiring digram on the SD web site for the Everything Axe set and wired up the Duckbucker in parallel. I found a huge drop in volume as soon as the Duckbucker was switched in (i.e. positions 2, 3 & 4) compared to the bridge and neck on their own. It was literally unusable - nothing I did could balance up the outputs between all the pickups and be a useable rig without fritzing around with volumes all the time. Raised/lowered pickups, pole pieces etc etc... Nothing worked.
After googling and reading a post in these forums, I learned that you can wire the Duckbucker in series - after I did that...BAM! Everything came together! All volumes balanced and positions 2 & 4 have that great strat quack which I've missed for so long (the JB Jr did not play that well with the stock middle pup, but I was not really using it at the time anyway).
So... my thing is... If the JB Jr and Lil '59 are higher output, why would SD suggest the Duckbucker be wired in parallel and have such a big discrepancy in outputs? On my guitar it was a disaster, but in my research on how to fix this issue, I see that there are lots of people that love it that way, or all the pup outputs are balanced in their guitars or something... But then I also see that some people hate the Duckbucker wired in series - I personally love it, so I suppose that it's a matter of personal taste. I don't understand how it works for some guitars and not others?
Just curious if someone smarter than me might know...
