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Single-conductor Humbucker...?


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I posted a dilemma I was having a few days ago but wanted to start with a simpler question to try to fix it:

I'm trying to install an old humbucker with a single conductor line into the neck position on my telecaster. For all the diagrams available online telling you how to install modern humbuckers, I have yet to find a single one that tells how to put one like mine into a telecaster.

My best guess was to solder the outer sleeve (the ground, as I understand it) to the back of the volume pot, then solder the inner black wire (the hot output, right?) to the pickup selector.

Now, as previously stated, while this configuration allowed both pickups to work, it seems to have rendered the volume and tone pots unable to do anythign but carry a charge. In other words, when I twist either knob, nothing at all happens.

As suggested by other members of the forum, I am going to go through and double-check to make sure all the solder points are solid. Admittedly, some of those connections were kinda gnarly, with maybe only half the inner strands making contact, for example. But I wanted to at least make sure I had the right idea with connecting the neck pickup.

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Thanks for that. That is indeed my plan, but short of doing the re-soldering I mentioned in the original post, I don't know what else to change. Oh well, I think I could probably live without tone and volume control, honestly.

One thing though - I noticed when I originally opened the tele to install a Seymour Duncan Little 59 back in December, it was wired backward from the diagram included with the pickup. That is, the way the leads on the pots seemed to be a mirror image of what was depicted in the instructions, so I just followed them accordingly. Basically everything was great until I tried replacing the neck pickup (which I decided to do because my favorite guitar tone is, in nearly any case, two humbuckers blended together.) Also, the SD diagram shows the capacitor on the tone pot being soldered only to the tone pot, but when I first opened the tele, the cap itself was linking the tone and volume pots.

...My plan now is to just re-wire the whole thing exactly as shown in the SD diagram. Wish me luck.

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