Soldering help needed!!

[Manfred W.]

Hello fellow musicians!


I have an old guitar, custom built in the Soviet Union in the early nineties of the last century. It's not a bad guitar, and I have a lot of history with it, so I decided to update one of the pickups.
After some investigation, I ended up with -surprise- a Seymour Duncan (SH-4 - JB Model Bridge Humbucker).

SD's documentation is very nice, and so is the Pickup Installation 101, but somehow I am not able to relate my guitar to any diagrams or guitar types that are documented.

So, I bluntly dump some pictures here of my guitar and its innards, hoping that one of you can advise me on how to solder the pickup into my ancient instrument.

Thanking you in advance!



​

 

[GuitarDoc]

https://www.seymourduncan.com/images/wiring-diagrams/2H_3G_1V_1T.jpg

 

[Mincer]

You do have to know what pickups you have, and know how the wires translate to SD pickup wire colors. Wire colors are not standard across the industry, so you might have to do some digging or get out a meter test how the wires connect within a pickup.

 

[Manfred W.]

Thanks for your replies.
@GuitarDoc: my guitar has one switch more than in the diagram. Does that matter?
@Mincer: I have a meter. How should I approach the metering? What should I measure?

 

[Mincer]

This is a great tutorial for pickup testing. If you can see who makes the pickup in the guitar, you might try to see if you can find the 'color codes' for the pickup. Also, what does the other switch do?

 

[marcello252]

in case you are not sure, desolder everything, resolder everything with a schema in front of you, sometimes it's time saving and at least you know what you did

 

[GuitarDoc]

Thanks for your replies.
@GuitarDoc: my guitar has one switch more than in the diagram. Does that matter?

Of course it matters, but I can't tell from the pics what it does. It looks like a SPDT but it doesn't look like there is anything connected to the pole (middle lug) so theoretically it shouldn't be doing anything. You'd have to use a multimeter to test the lugs in each switch position to see what's going on with it.

 

[GuitarDoc]

I would do like marcello suggested...desolder everything, take out all the wires and remove excess solder with some solderwick, and start over wiring it to get what you want.

If you want that extra switch to do something, decide what you would like it to do (split, parallel, phase, kill, etc) then see if that switch is the type that will do it or if you need to get a different one.

 

[Manfred W.]

OK, I think I made it: I bypassed the switch of which I didn't know the function anyway. That left me with basically only a few options;
Red & white were out anyway, so, only black and the paired green/silver needed to be connected.

Referring to the diagram that GuitarDoc posted above, it was pretty simple: I soldered green/silver to the volume pot meter. After that I only had two options for the black one.
Obviously, I first chose the wrong one, but found the correct lug quite fast eventually.

I relearned several lessons:

1) Don't be afraid of ANYTHING in life, even if it's outside your comfort zone
2) Ask for help in case of doubt
3) (derived from 1)) : nothing ever can go wrong (except maybe your adolescent daughter OD-ing)

Thank you all, I'm happy now.

PS: I still haven't really heard the pickup, since the strings are not back on yet. I'm cleaning the guitar, putting lemon oil on the finger board, etc. But I also noticed that some crews are rusty, that the jack output needs replacement, etc. In short: I entered a PROJECT.

 

[Manfred W.]

PPS: my guitar now sounds 7x as good.I still have a soviet pickup at the neck, so I can switch to retro anytime. Thanks for all your help and support!