IBZ USA C2 mystery

[Ludwigvan]

Hey guys,

if anyone could help I'd appreciate it.

A friend of mine dropped over his 1989 Ibanez RG760 for me to wire up for him. It's a HSS configuration. He tried to do it himself and got nowhere.

Initially he wanted to replace all the pickups but changed his mind AFTER he unsoldered all the pickups (he didn't touch any of the other wires), so now he wants to keep the two IBZ USA C2 single coils that were already in it. So he soldered in a DiMarzio Airzone exactly the same way the previous pickup was in it (an IBZ USA F2) and then got stuck, he couldn't remember how the two C2s were wired.

So the bit that's confusing me is that the C2s only have 3 wires:

Not 2 or 4 but 3. I've tried to find info everywhere but I've come up short. I heard that the C2s were later rebranded HS-3s but as far as I know HS-3s have 4 wires.

So now I don't have a clue what to solder where. You can see here on the 5 way that there's residue solder on the first, second and last lug, so that's somewhere to start but I'm baffled otherwise.

I'm strictly amateur when it comes to wiring guitars, I've done a couple of Strats and Les Pauls in my day but they were nothing like this. So as I say, any help would be appreciated!

 

[jeremy]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

do you have a multimeter?

 

[Ludwigvan]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

I'm afraid not, no.

 

[Guston7]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

My C2's came wired not using coil-splitting. So, reds to the two prongs on left (of pic), greens to ground (back of pot), blacks taped off (to nothing). However, I can see that you are splitting the Air Zone, so you may want to split the C2's (at least the middle) by wiring black to right side of switch. The left of your 5-way sends to hot (+), the right to ground.

 

[Ludwigvan]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

Thanks very much Guston7! I'll give that a blast.

So just to make sure about the black wires, the one from the middle pickup goes to the lug on the far right and the other one goes to nowhere, is that correct?

 

[Guston7]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

Well, I'm more familiar w/the metal switch they used; the vlx-91. I'm not sure which one that is. The fact that the far right has previously been soldered is a good sign. If it doesn't sound right in that spot, move it to the lug between the air zone split wires (blk/wht) & the solid black. As was mentioned, this would be real easy w/a multi-meter.

 

[Ludwigvan]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

Thanks for your help, it's working fine now.

The only thing was that it turned out that the green wires needed to be soldered to the switch and the red wires to the back of the pot.

 

[Guston7]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

All that will do is change the phase of the pickup. Makes no difference with each pickup separately and, since you did it to both neck & middle, makes no difference when combining those two. It will affect the middle/bridge setting because you left the bridge humbucker the same. Anyway, I'm glad you got it worked out.

 

[frankfalbo]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

All that will do is change the phase of the pickup. Makes no difference...

That's not entirely true with these pickups. The red wire goes directly to the flux plate, which is intended to be ground and therefore ground the magnets.

The pickup should only have 2 wires, red and green. The third black wire is not connected to the pickups. It's a shielding paint wire and should go to ground, not a coil junction wire. Under the pickup, the two wires that connect both coils together are short, soldered together, taped off and usually stuck in an empty pole piece hole. You can pull it out and solder a wire to it if you want to coil split.

But remember that red wire to ground means the top coil is red, so you have to take that coil junction wire to hot, not ground. Shorting to ground gives you the bottom coil which can hardly be heard.

 

[Guston7]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

Frank,
What you're describing is exactly how my more recent HS's are set up. However, I do have old IBZ stacks (some hs variant) that have 3 wires that make it all the way to the control cavity & measuring off the black indeed gives me half of the pickup's resistance. These came from an '87 540R w/three mini-switches, no 5-way.

 

[frankfalbo]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

I might have owned that 87 540R and added the wires!! If you still have the guitar send it to me. I love those.

The pickups on this guitar are "C2" which means 1989 or later. It's possible they have the coil junction wire, but I haven't seen it unless it was me or someone else adding it.

 

[Guston7]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

Lol...no I don't still have it. I do have a pic of it. It was an unusual metallic burgundy burst--I use the term 'burst' loosely. It was a great guitar, but I ended up with too many Radius'...I still have about 7 of them.

 

[slayest]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

Haha, I bet you haven't uninstalled the pickup from the guitar.

When I rewired my Ibanez USA custom I was puzzled by the same thing at first. But after I removed the IBZ USA C2 from the cavity, I found that the pickup actually got 2 wires only, red and green. The black wire is not from the pickup, instead, it is nailed on the bottom of the pickup cavity, with the intention to ground the shell of the pickup. Doesn't work for the IBZ USA C2 though, as its shell is not conductive.

My Ibanez USA custom is also HSS so the wiring must be the same as RG760. That is, red is hot (wired to the switch), both green and black grounded (to the shell of the volume pot).

Though the IBZ USA C2 is a stacked pickup, there's no wire to split the coils. So you can't split both the C2 and the bridge humbucker to get hum-cancelling when the pickup switch is set at position 4. The Ibanez USA custom indeed split the bridge humbucker at position 4 by connecting the corresponding wires to the unused side of the legs of the switch. Consequently, it brings in the noise for this position. Together with the useless black wires from the neck and middle pickup cavities, we can see that the model has a dull wiring design.

 

[Guston7]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

No, it is not the shielding-ground wire, that wouldn't give me half dc resistance. And, those wires do have a function. The cavity is covered with conductive paint & common grounded with the wire screwed into it. This does aid in noise rejection, even with C2's.

Frank pointed out that the specific pickup I was talking about was not a C2. I thought it was the same, as they look & sound alike--which is not so good. I did change the pickup. On that guitar, all pickups showed "IBZUSA". This was before the Cx, Fx.

 

[slayest]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

I was talking about Ludwigvan's C2 on RG760. Sorry I should have made myself clearer.

 

[Guston7]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

Oh, gotcha. Anyway, it seems none of the 3 of us thinks the way to go was green to hot, red to ground. Yet, that's what Ludwig found to work best. Weird.

 

[slayest]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

I currently put a GFS Dream 90 at the bridge and it's out of phase with the C2 in a way I don't like. I believe that's why Ludwig preferred to swap the red and green wires. But I don't bother 'cause the Dream 90 is not going to stay, as I use that guitar as a pickup laboratory.:naughty:

 

[Ludwigvan]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

I didn't really know what the hell I was doing but if it sounds good, it is good!

I haven't had a chance to plug it in since the other night, but I'll give it a listen again. There was a nice quack to the 4th position. I'll ask my friend which way around he wants it. It's actually quite a nice guitar and my pal is thinking of selling it, I might just add this to my ever growing collection.

I have pretty decent amount of guitars (for a poor musician) and I'm always game for new and weird pickup configurations. My lastest is a Tonezone out of phase with a Bluesbucker. I thought it wouldn't work because the Bluesbucker is supposed to imitate the sound of a P90. But I tried it out anyway and it's great. The Bluesbucker is a highly overlooked pickup, it's amazing.

 

[mrace]

Re: IBZ USA C2 mystery

I currently put a GFS Dream 90 at the bridge and it's out of phase with the C2 in a way I don't like. I believe that's why Ludwig preferred to swap the red and green wires. But I don't bother 'cause the Dream 90 is not going to stay, as I use that guitar as a pickup laboratory.
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