So last night sucked

[lorper]

Hey guys. I have succesfully swapped pups in the past. Always Duncans of course. I always went by the schematics on the internet from Seymour Duncan. solder white and red together, tape and dont use. black to selector and gree&bare to ground to the pot. This has always served me well. However last night when I took out the old Dimarzios to replace with Duncans I noticed that they made us of the red and white wires by combing black and white together and connecting the red on the opposite end of the selector. So I copied this to try it out. I also noticed that they had a single black wire going from the connection where the bridge pickup is soldered to the selector that goes to the pot. So i kept that in there as well. Plugged the guitar in and the pickups work however im getting a grounding noise. I should add that my solder pen that I was using was complete garbage and I ended up making a mess with the grounds in that I couldnt really liquidise the existing solder instead I could just push through it so it looks like crap right no. Im going to start troubleshooting this once I get a better soldering iron. My plan is to clean up all the connections. If that doesnt work than im going to go back to the original way I hooked the pickups in the past by combining the white and red.

I guess my question is. Why would Dimarzio suggest making use of those wires and Seymour Duncans schematics not ? Is there abenefit either way ?

 

[AlexR]

Re: So last night sucked

Pickup 5 conductor (4 + bare chassis ground) wire is not made for pickups. It just happened to be a product already available which suited the need for pickup makers. Hence the wiring colour codes used for hookup are entirely at the choice of whoever winds the pickup. There is no logic to any colour choice.

Hence to wire a pickup you must find the colours used by that particular maker.

 

[bearded madman]

Re: So last night sucked

um dimarzio, duncan, and pretty much every other pickup manufacturer use different color codes for their pickups.
If i'm reading this post correctly you wired up a duncan like it was a dimarzio just rewire following the duncan schematics.

 

[lorper]

Re: So last night sucked

um dimarzio, duncan, and pretty much every other pickup manufacturer use different color codes for their pickups.
If i'm reading this post correctly you wired up a duncan like it was a dimarzio just rewire following the duncan schematics.

Yes that is exactly what I did. I will retry that. So, can someone explain to me why Duncans have a red and white wire if we dont use them ? What is there purpose ?

 

[Clint 55]

Re: So last night sucked

That exact same thing happened to me with my P bass. I followed the weird wiring that was already there for my Steve Harris swap and I got constant noise. I went back in and followed the SD wiring diagram, shielded the bass, and it's dead quiet. Just follow the Seymour Duncan wiring diagrams, you can't go wrong.

 

[AlexR]

Re: So last night sucked

So, can someone explain to me why Duncans have a red and white wire if we dont use them ? What is there purpose

You don't use them.

But they are only unused if you only ever wire for a full humbucker in series.
How about you take a look at all the wiring possibilities there are about, and see there is way more scope than your limited uses.

 

[bearded madman]

Re: So last night sucked

Yes that is exactly what I did. I will retry that. So, can someone explain to me why Duncans have a red and white wire if we dont use them ? What is there purpose ?

okay so there are 4 wire and 2 wire humbuckers. The four wire have a hot and ground wire for each of the 2 coils of the humbucker allowing you the option of wiring it for split or parallel, the red and white wires together connect the 2 coils in series making it a humbucker.

 

[Brandenburg]

Re: So last night sucked

Yes that is exactly what I did. I will retry that. So, can someone explain to me why Duncans have a red and white wire if we dont use them ? What is there purpose ?

the red/white are for the south coil..black and green is for the north( unless i got it backwards)without them, you would have a single coil

 

[bearded madman]

Re: So last night sucked

http://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/the-tone-garage/humbucker-wire-color-translation/attachment/color_codes/

 

[Rand-O-Monium]

Re: So last night sucked

Bring a spare

 

[kramersteen]

Re: So last night sucked

Bring a spare

Guitars should have a spare pickup in the boot.

 

[playas]

Re: So last night sucked

The simple answer is that they are not the same wires as Dimarzio use different colour codes as mentioned above.
On an SD pickup with 4 conductor wires, the red and white are the end of one coil and the start of the other.

You wire them together to form a humbucker from the two separate coils.

It's not clear from your description what the other black wire you mentioned is doing but if all the pups are sd the easiest thing would be to use an sd diagram to avoid mistakes.

 

[BriGuy1968]

Re: So last night sucked

So, can someone explain to me why Duncans have a red and white wire if we dont use them ? What is there purpose ?

As has been previously mentioned, the red & white wires on a Duncan are the end of the north coil and the start of the south. When they're attached to one another the hot passes through the north coil, then into the south coil making them be in series with one another which is the standard sound for most humbuckers.

The reason they are there (as opposed to having just two conductors and a ground) is so that you can take advantage of other wiring possibilities if you want them. The typical possibilities are:

• Coil splits (north or south)
• Running the pickup in parallel (instead of series)
• Phase reverse

 

[Mincer]

Re: So last night sucked

Yes, the fact that every maker uses different colors is a bit challenging, as it is difficult in some cases to do the translating for certain brands. Not every brand has a ton of wiring diagrams either, so many use our diagrams, which, of course, has our color codes. The solution is that every pickup maker in the world should just switch to SD's colors and phase, so we can move on.

 

[Brandenburg]

Re: So last night sucked

Yes, the fact that every maker uses different colors is a bit challenging, as it is difficult in some cases to do the translating for certain brands. Not every brand has a ton of wiring diagrams either, so many use our diagrams, which, of course, has our color codes. The solution is that every pickup maker in the world should just switch to SD's colors and phase, so we can move on.

two ways to find the right color codes..

1st is this..not so challenging if you have this



next way is too get a pen and some paper, get a DMM or a OVM and start taking measurements to find the pairs and polarity to determine the coil..done it that way too with the fender triple bucker as there is almost no info on the net, of how to wire it. I think i found 1 doc and i looked everywhere

 

[Mincer]

Re: So last night sucked

Yes, thanks for posting the color code translator! I don't know how many people swap pickups and don't realize that we all don't use the same colors. But, hey, at least there are colors, and they don't make all of the conductors black no matter where they go!