HH, 3-way wiring... insanity

[Jacew]

Re: HH, 3-way wiring... insanity

"...leads me to think the Red might actually be this mysterious 'Vintage'/'Coil tap' tone you speak of? Certainly wasn't a Humbucker. I have no idea. I also soldered off the Black and Bare wires and ground them to the Volume pot."

If you had the meter you could just measure which is which... They're so cheap and useful there's no reason not to have one.

So what if you proceed by just removing the black wire from ground. Get any sound then? Then replace the red wire with black (and leave red disconnected). Get any sound?

If you can't get it sorted out this way. Leave out everything else and just wire pickup straight to the jack and sort out which wire is which. You may have broken pot or switch. Also make sure there isn't any shorting connections inside. Check solder points for not having solder between lugs that might short and make sure there's no bare lead wires anywhere in the cavity, single hair pointing out of solder may cause that sort of honking sound if touching ground, or silence it completely.

EDIT: Coul you post better picture. I'm on computer, and that picture is still far too unclear to be useful.

 

[MarctheRobot]

Re: HH, 3-way wiring... insanity

I don't have a multimeter to be able to check anything. Not expensive, I know. It's my next purchase before I get any new parts. Remember though that you're speaking to a Novice - attaching whichever part to whichever part is new to me, to check if whatever works or not. Sort of at the stage in the tech experience where it's like, "if it says 'doesn't work' then I'll know what that means."

I did try the Black and Bare wire together and nothing but I did find that when I soldered them to the volume pot, it was part of the circuit that seemed to make a sound. Remembering back to my last post - another oddity about that circuit (contrary to all advice) was that wiring the ground from the jack to the central terminal on the volume and soldering the supposed 'Hot' wire from the jack to the Tone actually produced life. This was two days ago where I just gave up on diagrams and [stupidly] tried my own thing until I got it to work. For a brief period, it did but as I say, it didn't have any dynamics from the Tone knob so I gave up on it because it wasn't how I wanted it.

As it stands, I have the wiring from this diagram:



And no, it still doesn't work.

 

[MarctheRobot]

Re: HH, 3-way wiring... insanity

With regards to the parts - I've come to that conclusion; that they don't work. The pick-ups are fine. The soldering is fine, too. I know the pots work because they were taken out of other guitars for me to test out. I subsequently put them back in their rightful places and yep, they were fine.

Process of elimination says Switch to me. That said, I'm also a bit curious about how this jack is wired and wished I've have just got a non-pre wired one.

The wire itself may be the issue - standard 22AWG, vintage waxed. No idea but I'm of the impression that's nothing out of the ordinary for this kind of work?

 

[Dave Locher]

Re: HH, 3-way wiring... insanity

If the black wire is connected to groups the pickup is in single-coil mode. Bill did his taps that way so you could connect it to the tone control (don't ask!).
So you had the pickups working, just in what Lawrence called "vintage mode." If you did everything exactly the same but disconnected the black wires you would have been done.

The wiring on these pickups is very unusual and it is not surprising most people don't know how to wire them.

 

[Darg1911]

Re: HH, 3-way wiring... insanity

If the black wire is connected to groups the pickup is in single-coil mode. Bill did his taps that way so you could connect it to the tone control (don't ask!).
So you had the pickups working, just in what Lawrence called "vintage mode." If you did everything exactly the same but disconnected the black wires you would have been done.

The wiring on these pickups is very unusual and it is not surprising most people don't know how to wire them.

I've pulled a few 3 wire humbuckers out of imports in the past. So are/were L90's just wired like any 3 wire humbucker? Black wire shorted to ground to split coils (or tap coil)?

 

[Dave Locher]

Re: HH, 3-way wiring... insanity

I've pulled a few 3 wire humbuckers out of imports in the past. So are/were L90's just wired like any 3 wire humbucker? Black wire shorted to ground to split coils (or tap coil)?

Yes, when the black wire is shorted to ground it's tapped.