First wiring setup, help?

[JRCorp]

I'm about to head off to work, but here's my situation, as e-mailed to someone from another website.



After a few weeks of waiting on parts and getting myself mentally prepared (and a quick failed attempt), I finally wired the guitar together. I doubt you'll remember what my plans were, but I've attempted to rewire my guitar fully, with 2 new (used) Seymour Duncan humbuckers, 2 tone knobs, and 2 volume knobs with push/pull switches for series/parallel. To save you from scrolling down, this is the wiring diagram I worked from to wire my guitar up.

The first fault I may have made was to work off a literally mirrored image of the diagram from SD's site. From my perspective (totally naive, to be polite), I figured that as the wiring of the guitar would go in the back of the body, the diagram SD supplied was backwards from what would be convenient and/or correct for me. So I opened up Photoshop, flipped the image, and printed them up. This is what I worked from (I've attached the image, if it would help). *I'll upload the pic later, but you can probably imagine.*

Last night, I worked for hours, and finally put the guitar together again. Being my first project, the body cavity looks relatively messy and cluttered with wires, and I'm not sure if I could do something to clean it up. I tried to wire things in some kind of logical order, first wiring together connections on each individual pot, then wiring the pots together, then wiring the pot assembly to the switch and output jack, putting this assembly into the guitar's cavity, and finally wiring the pickups and bridge ground connection.

To be clear and completely honest, I made another change from the SD diagram. In their picture, the Bridge pickup's controls are towards the front of the guitar body (towards the neck), while the Neck pickup controls are nearer to the bridge. As I felt this didn't make sense, and as I have a switchplate on my guitar that reads "Rhythm (up), Treble (down)," I simply reversed the setup, just wiring the pickups to the pots opposite what is in the SD diagram. I figured this was relatively safe, as there looks to be no affect to the setup other than which knobs and switch position are connected to which pickup.

About as nervous as you might imagine, I got a practice amp, plugged in, and tuned up with the strings I had left loose on the guitar. At first, I was scared half to death because I couldn't get sound, but it turned out to be a bad cable. This is how the guitar operates differently from what I'd expect:

1. The knobs turn backwards (clockwise turns the volume/tone down, counter-clockwise turns the signal up).
2. Not certain, but I believe the push/pull operation may be backwards as well (I'll check again and get back to you).
3 (most important in my opinion): The neck pickup is very loud, while the bridge pickup is very quiet. With the switch in neck position, the guitar is at its loudest; middle position, a bit quieter; bridge position, very quiet. I have an SH-2 Jazz in the neck position, and an SH-4 JB in the bridge position. I find this curious, as the JB is supposed to have higher output.

Also, though I think this is normal, when the switch is in middle position, both volume knobs have to be turned up some, or else there is no sound.

I gladly admit that I dove into something with relatively little knowledge on the subject, and will accept any criticism, but I'd rather just get my guitar in working order. I would love to take apart as little as possible to solve the problem, but I expect my best bet would be to take it all apart and start from scratch. Tomorrow's another day off from work, so I might hit Radioshack, buy some supplies, and give it another try. If a list of exact parts would help, the 2 tone pots are CTS 500k audio taper, the 2 volumes are 2 Alpha 500k push/pulls, and the switch is a short old-style looking model (apparently Les Paul style); all parts were ordered from guitarelectronics.com.

If you can offer any advice - troubleshooting, ideas on fixes, anything - I would be extremely grateful.

Thanks,
Jimmy

 

[JRCorp]

Re: First wiring setup, help?

bump? i'll probably just get some desoldering stuff and some new wire and redo the setup tomorrow, trying to follow the original wiring diagram.

 

[nepalnt21]

Re: First wiring setup, help?

try picking up some different colored wires (like some green, some red, some black, some white), do everything very cleanly and organized. that way, if you do again find something wrong, it is an easy fix. i always make sure i make everything color coded. i would also recommend doing everything exactly as the diagram shows you.

good luck, and dont burn everything all up when you desolder :fingersx:

 

[JRCorp]

Re: First wiring setup, help?

Thanks! After work today, I'll definitely make a run to either RadioShack or some kind of hardware place and pick up a bunch of supplies, and then get to it when I go home. This being my main guitar, I've been waiting weeks to have this done, and I'd like it to be correct. I'll try to post an update later.

 

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: First wiring setup, help?

You can switch the pot wiring from the diagram (as far as what pickup goes to what pair i.e. Les Paul style with the Bridge pots on the bottom). There's no need to follow the diagram since it's backwards in that respect.

As for the pots working in reverse, when you mirrored the image, you also put the pot tabs on the wrong side, and thus grounded the wrong lugs. Probably did the same with the push/pulls if you wired it mirror-ways.

Follow the original diagram's pot layout and only swap which pickup goes to which push/pull switch, but not how the switches themselves are wired.

 

[Woodcutter]

Re: First wiring setup, help?

To even out the output of the two pickups adjust the height of the pickups. Raise the height of the bridge pickup to increase its output and lower the neck pickup to decrease its output.

 

[JRCorp]

Re: First wiring setup, help?

Thanks for the response, guys. It's all a great help. I'm just checking the thread on my phone while at work, but I'll definitely get this done today. I was going to post another thread asking if it's normal for the two different models of pickup (SH-2 and -4) to have such a difference in output, so having a possible solution there is great.

A few questions - is there any specific gauge/type of wire to use? I had been using yellow 22-gauge that I ordered, along with some scraps left over from the original wiring. It's kind of embarrassing, but for grounds, I also used speaker wire. Is there any type to use for ground specifically? Is there a correct method to connecting two wires? I ask this because with one pickup I had almost no lead, so I soldered together some 4-conductor pickup wire ordered off the net, and taped it up. I think the right way would be heat-shrink tubing? Finally (for now), is there a specific way to create the 'jumper' connections on the push/pull switches? I just used little pieces of wire.

Thanks again for your help and patience. I apologize for the appearance and structure of this post - again, Ilm on my phone.

 

[tone4days]

Re: First wiring setup, help?

use stranded core, not solid core - way easier to work with

one thing i can recommend is to work one pickup at a time, from simplest to more complex, then add in the other pickup after you get the first working

so take the neck 'backwards pot' problem first ... get it sorted out ... then add in the tone pot for the neck pickup and get it working ... then add in the push/pull for the neck pickup and get it working ...

then you can duplicate all the for the bridge pickup

the difference in output could also be explained if you miswired the 'quieter' pickup in parallel instead of series or if you messed up the phase relationship of the coils ... make sure you get that part correct in order to realize the full potential max output

and yeah, it is normal that you need both volume pots turned up some for middle switch position to get any output

good luck
t4d

 

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: First wiring setup, help?

Actually I find solid core easier to work with, especially to feed it through the loop tabs of mini switches like push/pulls.

But for the push/pull jumpers (white to two tabs, green to tab and ground) strip a bit extra shielding off those and run them where they need to go.

Heat shrink tubing makes things look neater, but it's only a cosmetic thing. Electrical tape will protect splices just fine.

You can also use that same 4-conductor wire you mentioned to wire up the pots and such, though as I said, I use solid core. Radio Shack carries a 3-color pack - Red, Green, Black - that works fine. 22 ga. I think. I use Black for all Grounds, Red for all Hots, and Green for anything else (usually to help with Grounding since you can eat up a roll of Black wire in a hurry).

 

[JRCorp]

Re: First wiring setup, help?

Alright, everyone. I went out to RadioShack today and picked up some stuff, including the 3-color pack of stranded 22 ga. wire. So far, I've desoldered everything and disconnected everything, with the intent of starting from scratch. All I left together were the capacitors on the tone knobs.

Right now, I'm trying to solve the mystery of the difference in volume/output between pickups. As the bridge pickup was much quieter, I thought perhaps I'd made a mistake and thrown the Jazz in bridge and JB in neck position. But as it turns out, I had them in the right place. I have a multimeter out, and I'm trying to measure the DC resistance to compare it to the chart on the SD website, but I'm having a hard time just doing that. The directions that came with the multimeter aren't very clear, and I'm not really getting any results. I'm online to check the color codes for the wires and hopefully get a better idea of what I'm doing.

I guess I would connect the white and red wires, and then test resistance from the black (output) to green (ground)? That's what I'll try after posting this. I just want to be sure of the condition of the pickups, as I bought them off someone used. From my first attempt, both sound pretty good, just with a big difference in volume.

Hope I'm not being too paranoid!


...test results:
SH2N Jazz - approx. 7.6k ohms, compared to 7.72k on SD website.
SH4 JB - approx. 16.8k ohms, compared to 16.4k on website.

I feel like these are acceptable values, and I feel like maybe something was wrong in my wiring to cause the difference in volume. I guess I don't understand pickups well enough. From the electrical side, I suppose that more resistance would make for a weaker signal coming out of the pickup, although it's supposedly higher output? Time to look for a sticky thread about pickups.

 

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: First wiring setup, help?

The JB should definitely be louder than the Jazz, unless the JB is being split or Paralleled.

Funny things happen in control cavities once you put the lid on - like wires that look like they couldn't possibly touch another contact end up doing just that, which is why it's a good idea to insulate any strays with electrical tape. If your Red+White is flopping about, cover the backs of the pots where the Grounds are with a tab of tape, as well as drape a slice over the switch contacts.

 

[JRCorp]

Re: First wiring setup, help?

Thanks for the tip! That sounds about right. I did grab some heat-shrink tubing, but if I can get the job done without absolutely needing it, I think I'll just try using tape.