Splitting A Humbucker Output From Single-wire To Four-wire

[Justin G.E.]

I'm running a 2 humbucker system on a project guitar, but the neck humbucker has only a single output wire, thus preventing any coil splitting or phase reversal for that pickup. Given that I know the north-south placement of the pickup magnets, what mods are necessary in order to get the full four-wire output which will allow me the switch possibilities that I need?

As a sidenote, the bridge pickup is a Gibson build and follows their colorcode (North: Red-Start, White-Finish; South: Green-Finish, Black-Start), so the neck pickup should follow the same scheme.

[crafty]

Take the pickup apart, remove the cable, re-solder new four-wire cable to the lead wires.

It's a bit like doing surgery on a shrimp.

Edited August 9, 2006 by crafty

[Primal]

Take the pickup apart, remove the cable, re-solder new four-wire cable to the lead wires.

It's a bit like doing surgery on a shrimp.

+1

You gotta be VERY careful not to break the coil wire or the small wire it is soldered to. Also, pay close attention to how the coil wire is secured. For instance, the coil wire and the wire it was soldered to was secured in a nifty folded piece of electrical tape.

[Justin G.E.]

So it is not a matter of soldering new wires to the North/South Start/Finish poles? I just thought that I could pull the old wax from the pickups and rewire, but it isnt that easy?

Edited August 10, 2006 by Justin G.E.

[crafty]

Actually, it isn't going to be that hard to do the wiring, but you're just going to have to be very careful. The way the pickup is assembled is quite simple. Bobbin wire is soldered to lead wire, lead wire is soldered to cable. In your case, the two lead wires that are soldered to the cable are the starts of the coils, the two lead wires that are soldered together are the ends of the coil windings. You'll need to separate the two end winding leads and solder them individually to the four-wire cable.

[Justin G.E.]

Doesn't sound so bad now that I re-read that. Thanks!

[JohnH]

I did this on some open coil humbuckers, and made a step by step record. take a look, it may help you:

http://au.geocities.com/guitarcircuits/fou...rconductor.html

good luck!

John