How A Hotrail Works? Please Help

[elmington]

Guys I need a bit of help here im wiring up a telecaster with a hotrail at the bride, im gonna use a 5 way selector.

Hoping to get these configs not any particular order here

Bridge Full

Bridge Full+Neck

Neck

Neck+Bridge Half

Bridge Half

But I'm a little confused as to how the pickup works. When I saw that it had fours wire it confused me. I thought it would just have 3 wires, ground and 2 hots (one for each half). So I could basically run my 2wires into the switch, along with the hot of the bridge pickup and that would be that. So I need a bit of help knowing how the hotrail works. Below are my 2 theories

1.

Green and Bare=Earth

Black=Full output

Red and white=when brought into the circuit (or active) halfs the output of the humbucker

2.

Outer and Green obviously= Earth wires

Black=output of one half

Red and White=output of one half

3. I'm talking complete bollocks

[unclej]

hot rails work pretty much like any other pickup. go to the home page here, click on tutorials, go to electronics and then pickups or wiring diagrams...i can't remember which right now. there's a color code chart for a lot of major manufacturers..pick out yours and go to town.

good luck.

[psw]

check out seymor duncans wiring pages too for tips...or any place (like here) that have wiring schemes for humbucking pickups (it is just a small humbucker after all)

Basically the 4 wires gives you more options (like phase switching, series/parrallel switching and such) two of the wires will be hots and two will be ground. For a straight humbucker, the two grounds are connected together, for a split you could ground one hot with it's ground.

You won't do any harm to them by experimenting BTW... pete