John Beef
New member
Just bought a Knaggs which came with some pickups installed and the original pickups in the case. The original pickup leads were trimmed so as to make pickup swaps easier in the hollowbody, but it left the original pickups with a severe handicap. I thought about it for a couple days and decided a total lead wire replacement was the way to go instead of trying to splice to these itsy bitsy little things.
I only had one piece of 4 conductor wire about 13" long, and don't even remember where that came from, so I could only do one pickup, which is all I had time for anyway. Chose to work on the bridge pickup first because I have an excellent Fralin 8k humbucker I could use in the neck in a pinch if needed.
First I took the 4 screws out of the back of the pickup, removed the pickup tape around the outside, and pulled it apart. Made a note of which lead wires went to which internal wires (green to screw coil black, etc.)
Then I removed the tape off each of those connections, disconnected them (they were merely twisted together, not soldered) and desoldered the bare wire from the baseplate. I soldered the new bare wire to the baseplate, which is folded underneath everything so you can't really see it, and prepared the new wire to connect to the coils. As you can see the pickup consumes a good 4" of wire itself so I couldn't merely cut my 13" wire in half and do both pickups. The black spacer is only on one side; the other side of the coil is physically supported by the cable.
I connected each wire as it was before, soldered the connection, and covered each with a little piece of black electrical tape. Also, checked the coils' resistances to make sure I didn't mess up the internals in the process. Each one checked out at 4.19K. I was trying to get an action shot here but it didn't work out well.
Finally I put everything back together and have a pickup that should be working well with a decent lead. The only thing that's not quite right is the pickup tape around the coils. It didn't go back on quite as neat as it did the first time at the factory. I might order some and redo it. I supplemented the pickup tape with more black electrical tape but that looks really ghetto.
I only had one piece of 4 conductor wire about 13" long, and don't even remember where that came from, so I could only do one pickup, which is all I had time for anyway. Chose to work on the bridge pickup first because I have an excellent Fralin 8k humbucker I could use in the neck in a pinch if needed.
First I took the 4 screws out of the back of the pickup, removed the pickup tape around the outside, and pulled it apart. Made a note of which lead wires went to which internal wires (green to screw coil black, etc.)
Then I removed the tape off each of those connections, disconnected them (they were merely twisted together, not soldered) and desoldered the bare wire from the baseplate. I soldered the new bare wire to the baseplate, which is folded underneath everything so you can't really see it, and prepared the new wire to connect to the coils. As you can see the pickup consumes a good 4" of wire itself so I couldn't merely cut my 13" wire in half and do both pickups. The black spacer is only on one side; the other side of the coil is physically supported by the cable.
I connected each wire as it was before, soldered the connection, and covered each with a little piece of black electrical tape. Also, checked the coils' resistances to make sure I didn't mess up the internals in the process. Each one checked out at 4.19K. I was trying to get an action shot here but it didn't work out well.
Finally I put everything back together and have a pickup that should be working well with a decent lead. The only thing that's not quite right is the pickup tape around the coils. It didn't go back on quite as neat as it did the first time at the factory. I might order some and redo it. I supplemented the pickup tape with more black electrical tape but that looks really ghetto.
