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Guitar Electronics quest. Re: G&L and Seymour Duncan
Sheep
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Is there anyone in this here chat thread, or one in the other sub forum, that is very good when it comes to guitar electronics/pups? I'd like to run something by them and get their opinion on it.
Posted in the DnD chat thread.
Could anyone help me out?
I sent this to someone else but figured as much help I could get wouldn't hurt.
Lemme tell you what happened and what I did and, if you don't mind, offer your opinion on what happened.
I got a G&L with a Seymour Duncan Hot Rail in the bridge. G&L is pretty much a Fender as you surely know. Strat style guitar so it has the lever pickup selector. Five positions. Position 1 is bridge pup only. Position 2 is bridge and middle. Position 3 is middle. 4 is Middle and Neck and 5 is just the Neck.
There is a coil tap in the volume pot for the Hot Rail humbucker.
The Seymour Duncan Hot Rail was in the bridge position. It's super hot, sounds good, etc. However, whenever I had the selector in position 2 for the bridge and middle pup, they were pretty much NOT getting any juice. Sounded terrible. Also discovered that when in Position 3, the middle pickup was fine but the other two pups were getting some juice too. So basically all three pups were on. The pups all around had some "balancing" issues I guess you could say.
So I open her up, swap out the Seymour Duncan and the Neck. There are two wires coming from the Seymour Duncan to the coil tap. Both were soldered to the exact same spot. One was red one was black. I ask a more technical friend of mine and he says that while he is not certain, I shouldn't need but one wire from the SD to the coil tap and to remove the black one. I do. Reassemble.
Coil tap does not work but the "balancing" issue was solved. SD in the neck position blends with the middle pup just fine minus having to drastically boost volume whenever the SD is not selected. I guess that's due to it being very hot?
I got a G&L with a Seymour Duncan Hot Rail in the bridge. G&L is pretty much a Fender as you surely know. Strat style guitar so it has the lever pickup selector. Five positions. Position 1 is bridge pup only. Position 2 is bridge and middle. Position 3 is middle. 4 is Middle and Neck and 5 is just the Neck.
There is a coil tap in the volume pot for the Hot Rail humbucker.
The Seymour Duncan Hot Rail was in the bridge position. It's super hot, sounds good, etc. However, whenever I had the selector in position 2 for the bridge and middle pup, they were pretty much NOT getting any juice. Sounded terrible. Also discovered that when in Position 3, the middle pickup was fine but the other two pups were getting some juice too. So basically all three pups were on. The pups all around had some "balancing" issues I guess you could say.
So I open her up, swap out the Seymour Duncan and the Neck. There are two wires coming from the Seymour Duncan to the coil tap. Both were soldered to the exact same spot. One was red one was black. I ask a more technical friend of mine and he says that while he is not certain, I shouldn't need but one wire from the SD to the coil tap and to remove the black one. I do. Reassemble.
Coil tap does not work but the "balancing" issue was solved. SD in the neck position blends with the middle pup just fine minus having to drastically boost volume whenever the SD is not selected. I guess that's due to it being very hot?
Only think I'm worried about now is whether or not the Duncan is in Single Coil or Humbucking mode. I'll test that when I get home tonight.
Basically that and the drastic change in volume.
Sheep on
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Its a humbucker, so you will probably need to connect up all of the wires somewhere if you want both coils to work. You usually get four wires (two for each individual coil) and depending on how you want to configure them you solder all of them all up somewhere, sometimes in pairs. A coil is going to stop working if one of its wires is not connected up.
Any idea on why I had an issue with the pups blending?
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
I wish I could draw you a diagram but it's impossible on this computer, so here goes nothing.
a humbucker is two single coils put together, and each single coil has two terminals
A - coil 1 - B
C - coil 2 - D
So let's say you've got your hot signal going into terminal A. Solder terminals B and C together, send D to ground, and you'll have juice running through both coils in series.
Now, take that BC connection and send it to ground, and the juice won't even make it to coil 2 because it will take the shortest path to ground. This effectively turns off coil 2.
The coil tap switch alternates between those two states. It is also possible to have it perform the same function with a different wiring, where the BC connection is split, but there's no point, since the effect on the current is the exact same.
I'll give it another shot this weekend and take some pics while I'm at it. Thanks!