mediaslave Posted January 7, 2014 Report Share Posted January 7, 2014 Hello, Post number 1 for me. It is the second time I am upgrading/customising an old guitar. I have a set of two Wilkinson Zebra Humbucker pickups and a 1 volume, 1 tone , 3 way switch wiring I have found some nice wiring diagrams only to find that the wilkinson has different colours wire to the ones in the diagrams. I need to find out which is hot, ground north south east west (lol) but you know what I mean. I have spent hours on google to try and find the info but to no avail. Anyone able to help me? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mediaslave Posted January 7, 2014 Author Report Share Posted January 7, 2014 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curtisa Posted January 7, 2014 Report Share Posted January 7, 2014 This tutorial on the Project Guitar website shows you how to do it. Did this pickup come from a working guitar? At a guess from your pic I'd say Yellow is hot, Black is ground and Red/White is the mid point of the two coils in the humbucker, but the tutorial link would confirm your colour coding more accurately. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curtisa Posted January 7, 2014 Report Share Posted January 7, 2014 Further clues. At the bottom of this post over at the Seymour Duncan forum is a table from someone who got a Wilkinson humbucker to work with a Triple Shot. From his suggestions the Wilkinson wiring colours appear to be: Black = south start White = south finish Yellow = north start Red = north finish For a standard humbucker you'd join Red and White and tape off, Black goes to ground, Yellow is signal output. Seems to match your pic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mediaslave Posted January 8, 2014 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2014 Many thanks for your time here. I have found both posts before in my google travels and your post gives me confidence. My assumption was that the wires match the seymores and the seymore green is yellow on the wilkinson. Time to get soldering :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mediaslave Posted January 8, 2014 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2014 Before I do, I was going to use the wiring diagram from seymore below. So to confirm it seems the green wire displayed here is the yellow on the wilkinson?! I have a similar wiring harnass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curtisa Posted January 8, 2014 Report Share Posted January 8, 2014 Before I do, I was going to use the wiring diagram from seymore below. So to confirm it seems the green wire displayed here is the yellow on the wilkinson?! Wilkinson yellow = Seymour Duncan black. Wilkinson black = Seymour Duncan green (plus shield, marked as "bare" in your diagram) Basically follow the diagram above, substitute Wilkinson yellow for SD black, Wilkinson black for SD green, ignore anything that says "bare" and chances are it will work fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mediaslave Posted January 12, 2014 Author Report Share Posted January 12, 2014 Thanks guys for the help. Advice was sound and the guitar is making sweet melodies. Please see a quick write-up about it here if you are interested:http://www.mediaslave.co.uk/index.php/blogs/guitar-blog/item/8-guitar-rebuild Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kPATm Posted September 6, 2015 Report Share Posted September 6, 2015 Long shot here. I just joined specifically to ask this. I doesnt look like the OP is still active here so here goes.I bought a set of these for my Epiphone LP and I cant seem to get it wired up correctlyAs the LP obviously has 2 tone and 2 volume pots what difference would that make to the wiring diagram above?I have been using the black wire as ground and the yellow wire as hot. I have connected the black wire to the top of the volume pots then connected the yellow wire to the bottom tab of the same pot but I get vry bad hum and I cant really hear the actual guitar sound?Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curtisa Posted September 7, 2015 Report Share Posted September 7, 2015 May need pics to diagnose properly.Do you have red and white from the pickup joined together and taped off?There should be an equivalent Les Paul style wiring diagram on the Seymour Duncan website which can be substituted for the diagram above. Wiring colour codes should also be swapped as described in this thread and it should work as expected. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mdkhasid Posted August 23, 2016 Report Share Posted August 23, 2016 I also bought a pair of Wilkinson Zebra pickups but mine came with red and white wire coiled together, green and bare wire coiled together and a black wire. So my question is should I wire them as the Seymour Duncan wiring diagram? Please do let me know. Thank you guys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KeithHowell Posted August 23, 2016 Report Share Posted August 23, 2016 Don't solder on to the back of potentiometers! It is asking for trouble! Chances are you will overheat and damage the pot or get a cold dry joint or both! Some pots have a solder tag connected to the case for this purpose. If you cant find these buy some solder tags which fit over the shaft of the pot and bolt up against the body of the pot. I don't know where this solder on the back of the pot came from. It is BAD practice. If we had of done this in our electronics training practicals we would have been failed outright! It probably came from some notorious penny pincher trying to save a few cents! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curtisa Posted August 23, 2016 Report Share Posted August 23, 2016 Nothing wrong with making a solder connection to the back of a pot. The success of the solder joint is entirely down to the tools used, the preparation of the surface to be soldered and good old fashioned practice. Don't forget that it is possible to overheat and damage any component designed to be soldered if poor tools are used or the person holding the soldering iron lacks experience. It most likely dates from the days of point-to-point wiring in tube radios and TVs when there was no other way to ground the case of the pot. No doubt the practice was carried over to the guitar world by people who had experience assembling such circuits in factories. Back to the original topic: 18 hours ago, Mdkhasid said: I also bought a pair of Wilkinson Zebra pickups but mine came with red and white wire coiled together, green and bare wire coiled together and a black wire. So my question is should I wire them as the Seymour Duncan wiring diagram? Please do let me know. Thank you guys. Where did the pickup come from? If it came from a working guitar I'd be tempted to use the Seymour Duncan wiring diagram, as it sounds like the wiring colours and the way the pickup was supplied to you with red/white and green/braid coiled together matches the SD scheme. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mdkhasid Posted August 24, 2016 Report Share Posted August 24, 2016 1 hour ago, curtisa said: Nothing wrong with making a solder connection to the back of a pot. The success of the solder joint is entirely down to the tools used, the preparation of the surface to be soldered and good old fashioned practice. Don't forget that it is possible to overheat and damage any component designed to be soldered if poor tools are used or the person holding the soldering iron lacks experience. It most likely dates from the days of point-to-point wiring in tube radios and TVs when there was no other way to ground the case of the pot. No doubt the practice was carried over to the guitar world by people who had experience assembling such circuits in factories. Back to the original topic: Where did the pickup come from? If it came from a working guitar I'd be tempted to use the Seymour Duncan wiring diagram, as it sounds like the wiring colours and the way the pickup was supplied to you with red/white and green/braid coiled together matches the SD scheme. I bought it from China as I am currently studying there. But it was made and imported from Korea as the shopkeeper told me. You can see the wires in the image below- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curtisa Posted August 24, 2016 Report Share Posted August 24, 2016 Given the way those wires look pre-twisted, my gut instinct says that you can install it as per the Seymour Duncan diagram. It is possible to do a full breakdown of each wire in turn to verify the correct wiring scheme, but you'll need a multimeter to do it. Here's a couple of articles showing how it's done: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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