what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

[brinton]

I've done all the wiring right for my strat and it stil hums (i mean beyond high frequency hiss).
green-vol.pot
red&white-soldered together & taped
black-switch

I found that when i seperated the red/white less noise was there, but it still is as loud as a single coil with distortion & slight hum on the clean channel. I know it's the actual pickup because the neck pup is dead quiet. This is my first trouble in wiring and i've done 10+ pup jobs. PLEASE HELP!

 

[Artie]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

Green should go to ground.

(Unless, of course, its to the lug of the volume pot that goes to ground.)

 

[brinton]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

the vol pot does go to ground and the neck pup is connected to the same pot and it's dead quiet.

 

[AcidBurn]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

Also make sure that the bare wire is soldered to ground as well as the green wire.

 

[59paul]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

Yep, tin the green and Bare together with a bit of solder, then, get a good hot solder joint to the volume pot ( ground ) with them. This is usually where the hum comes from. ( weak ground )

 

[brinton]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

tried it all & it still hums and has less output than neck the JB dc=16k right so the neck would have to be at least 15k to sound louder and based on the sound i don't think thats the case. I bought it from Blackrose and it got here in 4 days the package/case was unopened the wires look totally fine and I cleaned up the excess solder on my pots etc. and the JB seems defective, is it even posible the shipping could've done it or worse yet left duncans factory broke? I'm so pissed off it's not even funny, btw why do all the 4-conductor humbuckers have such ****ty plastic wires, why don't all them use that cloth/push-back stuff?

 

[59paul]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

brinton, go back and take all the wires off, then re-solder them ( one at a time, of course ). 9 times out of 10, it is just a bad solder connection. The solder joint may look ok, but sometimes it isn't. Try this !!! *** and make sure you have enough wire stripped back to get a good connection !! I know it's frustrating at times, but be patient !!!

 

[brinton]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

thanks for all the help guys I think I stepped into the whole pup swapping thing too fast and I put my original 3 single coil pups back in and feel like I'm back home in fender land. I can be on ectasy some days when my tone is killing and sometimes just feel like a 15 year old that will never learn anything new when things don't sound quite right. God I'm so critical when it comes to my tone & music. Anyway I'll probably sit tight for now, keep mowing lawns and get a new amp to give me some versatile tones. It sucks to hear Hendrix & SRV and get what you want and then go to Van Halen, Led Zep, ACDC, Satch & Vai. (honestly I even like some of Yngwie's..... "arpeggios from hell" sweet tone thats not vintage or megavoltage very cool.
You know what I've found though, I don't think I've ever fell in love with the tone of one bridge pickup (I've been through 3 humbuckers, a P-90, and 3 fender style pickups).

 

[SemperRhythm]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

Brinton,

The same thing you are decribing is happening to me also with a JB bridge. Wired correctly, with GOOD solder joints (I checked with the meter to be sure) and it sounds like a single coil half-way distorted. I re-wired it 3 times and it doesn't change. The magnet is strong and the coils measure 8.15 / 8.19, soldering red and white gives me around 16.3-16.4. Still it's terribly weak. The Jazz neck severly overpowered it and I have another guitar with '59/JB... so I know what the JB should sound like.

Could the color coding be incorrect from the factory? i.e. wired got the wrong colored insulator? It's beyond 21 days so a return is not possible (I should have wired it as soon as I received it from B.R. but it sat on my desk for a month... grrr)

Anyway Brinton... you aren't alone here...

Nathan

 

[Hardtailed]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

Sounds like what I'm experiencing with my Custom (and I too use a Jazz in the neck and it works perfectly...)

 

[Lee]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

The best way to test a pup is to seperate it from the rest of the pups.

A very common mistake is to allow leakage from the pup you are trying to fix via one of the coils in the other pup. A pup in a circuit can act as an inductor. An inductor will pass low frequencies to earth - hence it will sound quiet (you are losing all the low frquencies to earth). It is actually the opposite of a capacitor which passes high frquencies but not low.

Seperate the new pup completely - and try it that way.

Lee

 

[SemperRhythm]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

Interesting... like I said, the only thing I can come up with is incorrect wire insulation, but I don't know if that would cause the weak signal and thin tone. It has the DC resistance (green-red coil is 8.15, black-white coil is 8.19, solder red-white is total 16.3-16.4), magent pull, the bare wire is ground

What would result if say, the black and white insulators were switched? Could that cause this?

Nathan

 

[Lee]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

This is something that isn't my field, but it is well-known that you can get coils in opposite magnetic polarity, pretty much the Peter Green 'nasal' tone.
However, I'm not a pup expert on stuff like that (but there are plenty around here that are). If you have the right sort of reading through both pups - then you MUST (IMO), have a 'phase' problem of some type.
Seperate the coils and play them both seperately, then twist the wires together and try the pup in humbucking. It will work, I'm sure of it. (but keep it seperate from the other pups and controls. Straight from the pup to the jack socket and to the amp.)


Lee

 

[Lee]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

Actually, having thought about it, I think what you have both done is this:

Instead of the outputs of the two coils meeting (like two rivers meeting and becoming a bigger river) and combining output and going off to the amp, what you have done is put the output of one coil THROUGH the secondary coil which will allow the higher frequencies to pass, but filter the lower ones.

Hence you get a weedy output with little bass.



Lee

 

[Hardtailed]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

Actually, having thought about it, I think what you have both done is this:

Instead of the outputs of the two coils meeting (like two rivers meeting and becoming a bigger river) and combining output and going off to the amp, what you have done is put the output of one coil THROUGH the secondary coil which will allow the higher frequencies to pass, but filter the lower ones.

Hence you get a weedy output with little bass.

Lee

Isn't that what serie-wiring is all about?

 

[3 cent hero]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

Isn't that what serie-wiring is all about?

yes

 

[brinton]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

well I did get it to kinda work for a day, I re-wired the whole guitar and when I plugged in sounded cool (less hum and slightly more bass) then the next day same problem, I seriously do think it's the pickup like semper-rhythm said because I've got the two pickups wired to the same pot and one's louder (neck) and the JB (noisier) then I did a further test and switched pups to each-others place on the switch (neck went to where the bridge would normally be connected and vice versa) and the jb still hummed. :yell:

 

[Dom L]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

Try wiring the pickup directly to the output jack,
tape and insulate the red/white from everythng else, black to hot , green and shield to ground
keep your volume low and check it that way
I use alligator clips to bypass all the circuitry when doing this

 

[SemperRhythm]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

Yes, this definitely has me baffled. I have done quite a few pup swaps without problems so this got my attention.

Here's how it was wired all three times (until I took it out). No cold solder joints either.

Green and bare, soldered tight to ground
Red and white, soldered together and taped, away from pots
Black to hot

Results:
Very thin tone, some hum but not much, little to no bass, very treble-y with about 1/3 the volume it should have.

I did remember from before that I accidentally touched the red/white to the ground (digging around trying to figure out what what going on) and the volume came up, but still rather thin, nowhere near the JB's tone.

 

[brinton]

Re: what's wrong with my JB/wiring? Please HELP!

Results:
Very thin tone, some hum but not much, little to no bass, very treble-y with about 1/3 the volume it should have.

same with me, sent it back though, thinking it over I don't think I sould rely on pickguard assemblies for different sounds. I think I'll save up and buy myself an actual guitar with a different feel like a gibson.