Fernandes Sustainer Pickup Wires

[mpire667]

I picked up a used sustainer a while back.

It was complete in terms of parts, but I don't think the guy was too careful uninstalling it.

Had to resolder the wires to the back of the driver unit.

When I got it all back together, I didn't get anything out of it and I'm pretty sure it's the driver part that's bungled.

Could anyone post a pic of the back of their fernandes driver and maybe describe the pinout to the connector?

Thanks

[thirdstone]

the fernandes website has a pdf file of the wiring. Its the same as the instructions that come with a new one

Kev

[psw]

Hey Kev/Thirdstone....you know you really should take the opportunity here to request the value of your missing trim pot or a couple of pics like the one's you just posted here...

Just a thought...

pete

[thirdstone]

Hay mpire667 what are the numbers printed on the white trim pots , I have one missing.

[mpire667]

Hay mpire667 what are the numbers printed on the white trim pots , I have one missing.

The missing one is 104 on my board, the others match.

The directions don't show what I need, just that 3 wires come from the driver. I need to see the back of the driver so I can see where those wires are attached.

[thirdstone]

Hay mpire667 what are the numbers printed on the white trim pots , I have one missing.

The missing one is 104 on my board, the others match.

The directions don't show what I need, just that 3 wires come from the driver. I need to see the back of the driver so I can see where those wires are attached.

Thanks for the info ,Ill get a pick of the driver in the morning. Cheers. Kev

[thirdstone]

I took a while to cotton on to what you were asking but i got in the end. Here is a high res pic of the driver connecton to the board. You can see the 3 wires.

Black white and pink

[mpire667]

I took a while to cotton on to what you were asking but i got in the end. Here is a high res pic of the driver connecton to the board. You can see the 3 wires.

Black white and pink

Thanks, but it was the back of the actual pickup/driver I need (The single coil lookin' geezer that emits the sustaining homotrons).

it looks like there's four solder points, with orange and red wires criscrossed.

a pic of the back of that unit will show me where to solder the red black and white wires.

I'd post a pic of what I have, but I suspect it's so far off base from what it's supposed to be that I'd just be embarrassing myself

[thirdstone]

I have the dual coil driver and it has just the gray loom comimg from the epoxy base. There is no way of knowing how its wired up.

[mpire667]

I have the dual coil driver and it has just the gray loom comimg from the epoxy base. There is no way of knowing how its wired up.

Ah, shoulda mentioned I had the 401. oh well, thanks for trying. good luck with your missing pot.

[psw]

I am not familiar with these commercial units, but perhaps if you were to post into the sustainer thread with plenty of pictures someone might nut something out. If you are able to take resistance measures of the driver leads or show it's construction something might be able to be derived for that and the instructions...you may have to go into a bit more detail about the problem. It is very much like a reverse active pickup system...if you know about sustainer principles so shouldn't come to too much grief if you were to try a few informed combinations of wiring...

pete

[mpire667]

Well, I gave up on my initial problem of missing wiring clips. Can't seem to find replacements anywhere.

Instead I picked up some wire-wire clips to take the place of the missing ones.

So far so good..

Back to the driver. Here's what it looks like right now.

When I got it, the white lead was as is, and the others were flying.

I trimmed back the sleeve to reattach the red & shield to the only other solder point that looked like it had been used.

Between the red/shield and white, I get 6.3 Ohms

I'm assuming this was the original wire, and that the black wire from the wiring clip is just shrink tube over the shield.

So what would really help right now is if someone could take a measurement between the white pin and the outer pins on a working fsk-401 driver to see if there's a reading, and also if there's no resistance between the outer pins of the wiring clip.

To do that without having to disassemble anything, test between the solder points on the top left of the board as it is in my first pic. The points that correspond to the red & yellow wires, and yellow and black wires should give a resistance, and the points between red & black should give no resistance.

Thanks

[psw]

Ok...for one thing, you can kind of tell that the yellow then i s probably a grounded shield or something, independent of the coil, or combined coils by the look of it. So the red and black are the ends of the coils and the reading the combination of two coils (which is indicated by the crossed over red wires on the unit).

Is the question then, which wires connect to which? In this case, I suspect that the red goes to red, the white to black and the yellow to the shield of the cable. If the wires are reversed to what they "should" be you may get the harmonic effect because of the reverse phase. It is hard to tell, but it would appear that the driver shield cable is not actually connected to a point on the driver itself, which may well be the case, serving to help shield the wires themselves.

It should be possible to test the unit outside of the guitar bu hooking it up and holding the driver over the strings well away from the pickups.

Not having one or even seen a unit as close as this, it is hard to get some hard evidence and advice. From the installation PDF's someone kindly sent me recently and available at the fernandes website, it looks like there was a clip where the driver connected and the original wires were red white and black.

pete

BTW...I am impressed by those small clips you found, can you point me to where you got them, part numbers and such?...could come in useful!

[mpire667]

Thanks pete, I'll try a few combinations once I get into a "testbed" state.

The wire connectors are kinda cool, they come from allelectronics.com pre wired (so no crimping necessary, although it would be cool to drop some nice connectors onto some pickups in general.)

2 wire

3 wire

4 wire

Think there's a 6 in there too.

Ok...for one thing, you can kind of tell that the yellow then i s probably a grounded shield or something, independent of the coil, or combined coils by the look of it. So the red and black are the ends of the coils and the reading the combination of two coils (which is indicated by the crossed over red wires on the unit).

Is the question then, which wires connect to which? In this case, I suspect that the red goes to red, the white to black and the yellow to the shield of the cable. If the wires are reversed to what they "should" be you may get the harmonic effect because of the reverse phase. It is hard to tell, but it would appear that the driver shield cable is not actually connected to a point on the driver itself, which may well be the case, serving to help shield the wires themselves.

It should be possible to test the unit outside of the guitar bu hooking it up and holding the driver over the strings well away from the pickups.

Not having one or even seen a unit as close as this, it is hard to get some hard evidence and advice. From the installation PDF's someone kindly sent me recently and available at the fernandes website, it looks like there was a clip where the driver connected and the original wires were red white and black.

pete

BTW...I am impressed by those small clips you found, can you point me to where you got them, part numbers and such?...could come in useful!