I think I goofed up my wiring

[hwiho2002]

Hey y'all. I've been running jb/true velvet/59 in a parts strat for about a year, and i always thought the humbuckers sounded strangely weak and thin, contrary what I was used to hearing from the jb/59 in my other guitars. I just assumed my guitar was naturally bright, and messed with different value pots and different magnets, but got nowhere. I decided to swap out the humbuckers and took a second look at the wiring diagram and I think I messed up.

It's a schaller megaswitch e that does:

The wiring config:

Connections
1 mid hot wire
2 neck hot wire outer coil
3 output
4 ground
5 neck hot wire inner coil and cold wire outer coil
6 bridge hot wire inner coil and cold wire outer coil
7 bridge hot wire outer coil

Thing is Schaller's hot and ground wires are the finishes of both coils, while duncan's are the start

So instead of wiring the corresponding colors for the start and finish of the windings (duncan's green for schaller's white, etc.) I went with what the manufacturers lists as hot and cold (dunca's black for schaller's yellow, etc.)

I guess my ultimate question is, do the manufacturer's hot and ground matter? Like for Duncans the green is always ground and black is the hot? Or they can change depending on the wiring, and what really matters is the start and finish of the coil windings?

Also what exactly happened due to my mistake? Why did the pickups lose so much power? If I'm interpreting the switching principle right from the schaller website with my initial incorrect wiring when I just had the humbucker switched on white was getting sent to ground, red to output, and black and green together isolated which resulted in the weak sound, i think

 

[AlexR]

Re: I think I goofed up my wiring

Its convention 9for Duncans) to always use the hot (black) for the switch or volume connection and green for ground. But in mixing pickups often you have to invert one or more connections.
That bit is usually easy. However its the series connection that often trips people up. In that diagram there is something odd/wrong about the + and - of coils. Maybe it makes a difference and maybe it doesn't.

If you have individual pickups sounding bad when only 1 is selected, then you have soldering location issues. If they are bad only when selected together then phase issues become more likely.
But here is an additional resource:


https://www.stewmac.com/How-To/Onli...d_Wiring/E-Model_Megaswitch_Instructions.html

This doesn't do a diagram, merely a lug by lug description of what goes where.
The problem tends to be that in mega/super switches that when you swap hot and ground, that you also have to swap the locations of the wires that are the other ends of the coils too - unless they are together on 1 lug, so be aware of this.

 

[hwiho2002]

Re: I think I goofed up my wiring

What's confusing is that the megaswitch e sold by stewmac is not the same as the schaller one. I made the mistake of buying from stewmac thinking they were the same, but the stewmac one is not humcancelling in pos 4. Not really sure why they're named the same.

 

[hwiho2002]

Re: I think I goofed up my wiring

now that you mention it the diagram is confusing. I wish instead of + and - they wrote start and finish

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: I think I goofed up my wiring

How did you determine the StewMac switch was different? Because of the weak sound and lack of hum-cancelling? Those effects are likely from wiring the Duncan humbucker backwards. Pickups can run either way by themselves, but it starts to matter when you are combining them with a switch and the selected/combined pickups are out of phase to each other or the non-humcancelling coils are combined.

 

[hwiho2002]

Re: I think I goofed up my wiring

Sorry I should've been clear. The guitar currently has the Schaller megaswitch e in it, but before when I initially started assembling the partscaster I used a megaswitch from stewmac thinking it was the same thing. It's even called megaswitch e like the schaller one, but it's actually different, different number of lugs, physical dimensions, etc. You can get the same wiring configuration with the stewmac one, but for some reason in pos 4 it's not hum cancelling, and it even says so on the stewmac site. The little asterisk next to the pickup combinations denotes humcancelling, pos 4 does not have the asterisk.