OK, I'll make this brief. I'm a careless idiot.
I have a very old and decrepit westone bass with P type pickup. It has adjustable poles and had a very weak output just on 1 string. Whilst 'overhauling' the electronics I've pulled a hookup wire out of the pickup. I've soldered the broken wire back to the pickup in the right place (I'm 99% certain), but here's the problem.... Rather than a hot and earth, this pickup has 3 hookup wires, black (hot) blue (earth) and red (broken) The black is common to both coils and is the hot (I know this for sure) Blue is earth as it's still soldered to the back of the pot. I have no idea, and there is no evidence to suggest where the red one came from or should go. I thought it was a second earth, but the complete lack of sound when plugged in tells me not. Anyone have any ideas? I know I'm being an idiot, but I was just raising the pickup height and had no intention of getting the soldering iron out when disaster struck. (BTW disaster came in the form of an inquisitive 4 year old daughter..'Daddy, what does this do?' )

P.s. I have no intention of spending any money on this bass, it's crap and doesn't deserve a new pickup, and in any case this is a simple fix I'm sure.....

I know we can fix it. A picture would help figure it out. Those old Westones were cool!

post a pic if you can.

Cool, I'll try to sort out some pictures.

BTW, whilst this bass may have been cool once, but a lifetime's (ab)use at the hands of a careless idiot, has rendered it less than useful. Damage to date (starting at neck) - lost string tree, cracked headstock, lifted fingerboard lacquer (from a fret polishing job), cracked and broken scratchplate, broken pickup, bent bridge saddles, dethreaded strap buttons.
and of course the usual finish wear / dings.

How do i upload pics though?

All of those problems can be fixed if you want to bother.

I don't know how you up load pictures here. I just link to my Photo Bucket account.

OK, so with a P-Bass pickup, it's actually two single coil pickups connected in series.

Each pickups has a hot, and a ground (two wires).

The way it's configured, is the hot from one pickup is connected to the ground on the other pickup (that's your series connection). This just looks like one wire joining the two together.

That leaves you with two wires - one coming from each pickup. One is a ground, and the other is hot.

What we have when the two pickups are connected together like this is a humbucking arrangement, and the two pickups wired together like this work together as one.

If you look carefully at the picture below, you should see what I mean.

I'm afraid I can't help decipher your colours though. A picture would be helpful.

;)

http://www.rocknrollvintage.com/prodimages/fralin-fender-professional-bass-pickups.jpg



Here's a schematic for P Bass wiring that might also help, and clearly shows the three pickup wires:



http://www.guitarnucleus.com/gitschems/Pbass_wir.jpg

All of those problems can be fixed if you want to bother.

I don't know how you up load pictures here. I just link to my Photo Bucket account.
I believe this is known as 'mojo'
One day I'll fix the important bits like the cracked headstock. I don't really hate this bass, it was my first, and if i'm totally truthful, I want to keep the pickup, to keep it as close to stock as possible.

OK, trying to post a pic of the pickup. Wonder if this will work.

did that work?

does my question make sense now? Blue is ground, black is hot, *** is red???? (BTW it's not another ground, I tried that already!)

i did ask if it was active, but im an idiot with a memory like a goldfish :ninja:.

could the blue and red be dual earth? with black as hot? or dual hot? oh man this has me confused now

no not active. I tried red and blue together as dual earth, no dice. I haven't tried dual hot yet, I guess that's next...

The picture could be taken a lot closer with higher resolution, I can't see well the blue and black wires and how they are wired together or not...

In my idea, I think it could be wired like this :
P1 +
P1 ground
P1 -

P2 +
P2 ground
P2 -

with ground wired together, and red the hot wire and blue the cold one.

I can't see if it's wired correctly due to the poor picture though.

What do your pots look like?

I ask this because I think I know what was done here (and I feel the judging eyes upon me as I get this one wrong)...

One wire is going to be the negative (or ground) which is going to be your red wire. The other two are going to be your positive (or hot) wire. When I installed my EMG-P pickups, The hot wire had a woven shield wrapped around the initial wire core with a plastic insulator between the core and the sleeve, then around the entire bundle. So technically, it's two wires in one. The braided wire got soldered to the case of the pot and the rest of he wire continues to the terminal of the pot.

Here, it looks like the same concept, but simplified. Instead of a metal braid, you just have a whole separate wire, which seems like a better way to go. I'm just not sure which one runs to the case of the pot and which runs to the terminal.

I'm not an expert at bass wiring, so I'm sure I didn't get all of the terms right, if I even got them in the right place. I probably didn't even get the solution right. But beside that, I think I made my point clear. If I didn't and you need a pic, ask and I'll see what I can do.

The picture could be taken a lot closer with higher resolution, I can't see well the blue and black wires and how they are wired together or not...


I can't see if it's wired correctly due to the poor picture though.



Unfortunately, the option to upload pics is limited to 150k. Is this any better you have to click on the pic to get the full resolution?

Thanks for the pic, that's what I said earlier I think. Except the + and - are inversed on the 2nd coil :
C1 - Blue Cold
C1 ground
C1+ to P2 -

C2 + Red Hot
C2 ground
C2 - to P1 +

Try with just with blue and red as cold and hot, if it work try to connect ground to ground (or to blue cold). :hyper:

Ok, I won’t swear to it because it’s hard to tell from the pictures but I think this pickup has a copper clad bobbin. The black wires are all soldered directly to the bobbin so they are grounds. In fact this pickup should work without even hooking the black wire up.

The blue wire is the –

The red wire is the +

I tried to bump up the contrast on PhotoShop so we can see better.

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/searcystringworks/Pickups/p.jpg

My first try would by to solder the black and blue together on the back of a pot and solder the red to the input on the pot.

The black wire is the extra wire, not the red.

Exactly what I said from the start :smug:

True! That's two votes for!

:p

Seems like your pickup is shielded. Just connect the black wire to common ground. Red and blue wires are hot and cold, as said before...