Pickup install help

[boxerguy8888]

Hi all. I hope I can write this so it makes enough sense for someone to help. I have a 2017 gibson faded. I recently upgraded to the seymour duncan hot rodded pickups. I decided for the install I would clip off the quick connects from the gibson pickups and re use them for the Duncan's. I found on this forum where some others had done similar and found a photo that showed the wiring to popular p/ups and I THINK I got it right but I'm just bad enough to know that I may have screwed it up and want someone smarter to check my work. So for the neck, the quick connect wiring was in this order bare-black-red-green-white.. the Duncan's had the same colors, so from the chart I saw I connected them as follows (G- for gibson quick connect/ D for duncan wire)... G-red to D-black, G-black to D-green, solid to solid, D-white and red i connected together, and G-green and white I capped off not connected to anything... so I connected those and tried it and to me sounds good I think though my ear isn't as refined as some. So I did the same thing to the bridge p/up and tried, and I got nothing.. dead air. Couldn't figure it out until I noticed that even though the quick connect wiring for the bridge had the same colors as the one for the neck, they were not in the same order but instead were bare-green-white-black-red. So what I did then for the bridge was pretend that it was in the same order as the neck and it seems to be working. There is some hum, like on my strat, but I dont know for sure if it was there before and i just didn't notice until i started listening for issues. Goes away when I touch the bridge, and to be fair this room has tons of electronics. I'll add some photos to help make it more confusing. Thanks for the help in advance. Oh, and in case it matters, which..I just realized it might. it's a lefty model.

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[boxerguy8888]

Re: Pickup install help

Lol. Same response I got from seymour duncan "technician".

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[Mincer]

Re: Pickup install help

To be fair, most Seymour Duncan experts are not experts in how Gibson wires their harnesses.

I don't know how they do it, either, but first you have to find out what wire does what. SDs are easy: black is hot, red & white are the series link, green and bare are ground.

 

[boxerguy8888]

Re: Pickup install help

To be fair, most Seymour Duncan experts are not experts in how Gibson wires their harnesses.

I don't know how they do it, either, but first you have to find out what wire does what. SDs are easy: black is hot, red & white are the series link, green and bare are ground.

Very true, but they deal in aftermarket pickups, that's kind of their thing. So I would think they would take the time to figure out the use of their product on the guitars they go on. That's why any aftermarket company that sells car parts, make sure it fits the car or sells an adapter. Aftermarket car radios! How many different makes and models of cars AND radios are there? And theres a harness that will adapt any one to any other one. I'll probably just return them and go with another company or with gibson. Thanks for the info though.

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[Silence Kid]

Re: Pickup install help

Aftermarket car parts don't fit all cars; try owning a Lotus Esprit and getting a generic part from Autozone to fit. Gibson pretty much ****ed with the standard method of installing pickups (easy soldering) in favor of a proprietary harness to encourage naive people to buy more of their pickups rather than figuring out the wiring.

 

[boxerguy8888]

Re: Pickup install help

Aftermarket car parts don't fit all cars; try owning a Lotus Esprit and getting a generic part from Autozone to fit. Gibson pretty much ****ed with the standard method of installing pickups (easy soldering) in favor of a proprietary harness to encourage naive people to buy more of their pickups rather than figuring out the wiring.

Yeah it's looking like if I want to keep the Duncan's I might just have to pull that computer board out and start fresh, not the worst thing ever I guess. I'll give it a few days, maybe the right person will see the post that had to deal with this headache already and know what to do.

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[akio]

Re: Pickup install help

Are the gibson pickups covered? If not, just pull the tape and see which wires go where.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Pickup install help

I think the question here is what wire goes where on the Gibson pickups, so that may require a meter or disassembling the cover of the pickup and looking. The colors of the harness might not line up with the colors of the pickup- I don't know how Gibson does those things.

 

[boxerguy8888]

Re: Pickup install help

Thanks guy, I did not check that. I will pull the wrap off of the gibson ones when i get home from work.

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[Gtrjunior]

Re: Pickup install help

I pulled the harnesses out of my Gibsons because I had the same issue as you. I just didn’t feel like dealing with the BS.

 

[boxerguy8888]

Re: Pickup install help

Here we go. This is the neck, Gibson pickup. Bridge was wired exactly the same.

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[boxerguy8888]

Re: Pickup install help

Ttt

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[Silence Kid]

Re: Pickup install help

You mentioned the way you have the Duncan bridge wired & installed at present it seems to work, but with hum; are you certain both coils are active (screwdriver tap?) Are you certain it's not out of phase with itself? That would cause hum and a "strangled" sound along with 60 cycle noise. To get it in-phase (if it's actually out) it appears you could flip the red/white or green/black wire pairs to see if that made a difference. I'd also check to make sure with a multimeter that you get full DC output at the ends of a cable plugged into the jack from each pickup (to be certain it's not in parallel or cutting a coil.)

Then again, it's possible your pickup is installed correctly and you have ground noise from an unrelated issue.

 

[boxerguy8888]

Re: Pickup install help

You mentioned the way you have the Duncan bridge wired & installed at present it seems to work, but with hum; are you certain both coils are active (screwdriver tap?) Are you certain it's not out of phase with itself? That would cause hum and a "strangled" sound along with 60 cycle noise. To get it in-phase (if it's actually out) it appears you could flip the red/white or green/black wire pairs to see if that made a difference. I'd also check to make sure with a multimeter that you get full DC output at the ends of a cable plugged into the jack from each pickup (to be certain it's not in parallel or cutting a coil.)

Then again, it's possible your pickup is installed correctly and you have ground noise from an unrelated issue.

Yeah I'm getting the proper clicks when touching with a screwdriver on neck and bridge, on both north and south. Maybe just go through and check all my solder work. On the Duncan's I connected the north and south finish wires how they said for a series link. And that left the original wires going into the circuit board from the gibson north and south finish wires unused. I just capped them off, should they be grounded instead maybe?

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[Silence Kid]

Re: Pickup install help

Re-reading my post (already quoted-) I realize when I said flipping the "red/white or green/black wire pairs" I was referring back to the Gibson pickup you disassembled and not the Duncan; but it sounds like if you hard tied red/white on the Duncan and only have the green/black/bare plugged in, that will not be an issue. I would not suspect capping off the extra leads from the circuit board would have an effect on grounding. At this point I'd use a multimeter and check continuity to ground on every metal piece of the guitar and make sure the bare ground wire is in the correct hole.

 

[boxerguy8888]

Re: Pickup install help

Will do that tomorrow.

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[dave74]

Re: Pickup install help

Yeah it's looking like if I want to keep the Duncan's I might just have to pull that computer board out and start fresh, not the worst thing ever I guess. I'll give it a few days, maybe the right person will see the post that had to deal with this headache already and know what to do.

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Start fresh and end it raw IMO. Duncans need to be in there and wired standard.