Wiring Help in SG

[Ronnie_Snow]

Hi,

The bridge pickup works. It's an AY Gibson pickup...

I'm not sure if this guitar sounds incredibly thin or if it is wired incorrectly...

There's no bass at all, it sounds good but theres not bass for an Alnico 5 pup... I have an Alnico 2 humbucker I'm comparing it to in another SG and there heaps of low end compared to this...

Yes I know my soldering job is shit

 

[freefrog]

What are you asking exactly?

Anyway: "questionnable" soldering job aside, the bridge PU seems to be wired normally for a Gibson humbucker (red= hot, black and bare wire = ground, white and green tapped altogether).

A useful test would be to lower the TONE control and to listen if if behaves normally or if it reacts a bit like a second volume pot. I'll explain what it means later if needed...

 

[Ronnie_Snow]

Yes Tone control behaves normally

 

[freefrog]

Yes Tone control behaves normally

Well, at least you can lower it to make the sound less thin. ;-)

More seriously: try to measure DCR from the output jack. If resistance is between 9k and 10k, the coils are intact and the problem + its solution are to search elsewhere.

FWIW, a SG has a simple wiring made of short bits of cable so it hasn't a high parasitic capacitance. That and the thin body contribute to make the sound brighter and thinner than with a Les Paul, for instance. But there are various ways to "tune" the sound of passive pickups and to make it warmer if needed. More on that later if it can help.

What amp do you use? Do you plug to it through a long or short cable, or through a wireless system? Such things actually have an effect on the tone of passive PU's, FWIW.

 

[Ronnie_Snow]

It is already pretty low... It measures 9.5k...

I have 2 Gibson SGs. One has a Slash 2.0. The other has this Gibson humbucker...

I am running both through a Friedman Smallbox and a Marshall quad.

I am struggling to understand why this one sounds super thin... The Slash pup chugs considerably harder and there is actually low end...

This AY pup is about 14 years old... I am wondering if it has got something wrong with it internally or this SG was a bad purchase as it sounds really thin...

I found an ancient post on another site which mentioned previously Gibson wired like this...

NECK:
Red was hot and went to volume pot.
Green and white were coil split and I soldered them together and put heat shrink tubing on them
Black and bare were ground, solder to back of volume pot

BRIDGE:
White was hot
Red and black were coil split and I soldered together, heat shrink
Green and bare were ground

I tried the above but still remains thin...

Found this old post

Gibson Angus Young pickup problem? HELP

Hi guys, i recently purchased a new angus young humbucker from an authorized dealer and i believe it has a problem, but i need verification. I also got a 57 for the neck of my sg and upon wiring everything i noticed that the sound of the angus pickup was a lot brighter and lower output...

www.mylespaul.com

 

[freefrog]

It is already pretty low... It measures 9.5k...

I have 2 Gibson SGs. One has a Slash 2.0. The other has this Gibson humbucker...

I am running both through a Friedman Smallbox and a Marshall quad.

I am struggling to understand why this one sounds super thin... The Slash pup chugs considerably harder and there is actually low end...

This AY pup is about 14 years old... I am wondering if it has got something wrong with it internally or this SG was a bad purchase as it sounds really thin...

I found an ancient post on another site which mentioned previously Gibson wired like this...

NECK:
Red was hot and went to volume pot.
Green and white were coil split and I soldered them together and put heat shrink tubing on them
Black and bare were ground, solder to back of volume pot

BRIDGE:
White was hot
Red and black were coil split and I soldered together, heat shrink
Green and bare were ground

I tried the above but still remains thin...

Found this old post

Gibson Angus Young pickup problem? HELP

Hi guys, i recently purchased a new angus young humbucker from an authorized dealer and i believe it has a problem, but i need verification. I also got a 57 for the neck of my sg and upon wiring everything i noticed that the sound of the angus pickup was a lot brighter and lower output...

www.mylespaul.com

OK, thx for the infos.

9.5k doesn't appear to me as low in this case.

The wiring with White = hot and green = ground is functionally the same than the previous one: it swaps start and finish wires of both coils but they remain RWRP.

I've already solved problems of wiring in stock / brand new guitars and pickups (even expensive ones)... If ever an error was made in the factory with the color code of start and finish wires for one of the coils and if the pickup is therefore out of phase with itself, it can be checked by swapping the two wires of one coil only (for example, by connecting white to black and green to ground while keeping red as hot).

If I had the pickup here, I'd measure its inductance (which would reveal if the pickup is OOP with itself: this wiring doesn't affect the measured DCR but it lowers the inductance). I'd also check it with the probe of a magnetometer... If nobody has such a thing in your neighborhood, it might be interesting to try another bar magnet than the stock one in this AY humbucker. After that and if the guitar is definitively thin sounding, a few things remain possible by manipulating the resistive and capacitive loads. More later on this if it can helps...

 

[beaubrummels]

The solder on the bridge volume pot ground doesn't look good. I would start checking continuity across all your solder joints and reflow any that don't read correctly.

 

[jeremy]

that angus pup was pretty bright and thin from what i recall, sounded good into a nmv marshall cranked up though

 

[Ronnie_Snow]

Last night I directly soldered the 2 wires from the output jack...

Still sounds bassless...

Is it possible any of the grounding wires running to the pots from the main ground sleeve would remove bass?

Or what about the output jack wiring?

FYI, The neck pickup has bass... And compared to the other SG it seems something is wrong specifically with the bridge humbucker or wiring along the way...

Or the tone of the guitar is just super thin...

Do I clean this mess up and start all over again...