Humbucker wiring advice

W

wjombat

New member
First of all this forum is very helpful. I don't know how many times a completely rewired my guitars because I switched the output jack leads. Won't make that mistake again.

To my point. I have a vintage Dimarzio Super Distortion. When I got it an put it in it sounded a great deal like a single coil. At some point it had its original wire braided lead removed and replaced with a four conductor. So I took a look at it and appeared to me that it was put back together with the coils going the wrong way. I flipped them. I also rewired the leads because I was concerned that only one coil was playing. I had a little trouble making a connection with the ground and the base plate. So here are my results. No sound. Wa Wah. :(
I know that a bad solder joint is a likely culprit but I was also wondering if a bad solder to the base plate would produce no output, I would think there would just be more noise? Or perhaps I was wrong about the magnet/coil orientation. What would happen if the magnet was not properly oriented in relation to the coils? Or am I just a crappy solderer?

Thanks
 
Re: Humbucker wiring advice

Possibility #1 - Only one coil is working. A simple tap test would demonstrate which.
Possibility #2 - The coils have been mistakenly wired permanently in parallel. This will sound thinner than series wiring.
Possibility #3 - The coils ends have been connected to the 4-con + shield cable in the wrong order. This will mess up the phase relationship between the coils in all combinations. D'oh!
 
Re: Humbucker wiring advice

Those sounds like good explanations for the original problem. What about my current problem of no sound? Can it be a magnet misaligned or a bad base plate ground? Most likely bad soldering all together.
 
Re: Humbucker wiring advice

A misaligned magnet would cause a weakened field towards one end of the PU.

A bad grounding connection to the HB baseplate should only affect the screening. (i.e. The PU will be prone to interference and hum.) It should still produce a signal.

The majority of HBs have three small holes in their plastic bobbins. Normally, these would be expected to be aligned the same way as each other.

On a Super Distortion HB, the only detrimental effect of having one coil "the wrong way around" compared to the other is that the run of cable from the start/finish of that coil to the 4-con + shield cable will be roughly two inches longer than for the other coil.

Regarding the zero output problem. I suspect that, in struggling to make the ground connection to the baseplate, you strained one of the other conductor connections. No circuit = no signal.
 
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