Noob wiring trouble

Yvarg · #1 08-06-2007, 03:18 AM

So recently I've been working on a whamola styled bass, and now I'm down to the electronics part of it. I was given a working, passive set of DiMarzio P bass pickups including the pots and output all wired together. I had to detach the pickups from the pots though to put the pots and output inside of my steel tubing like so:
http://img451.imageshack.us/img451/9...ring003im5.jpg
The only problem I have now is that the electronics do not work (no doubt due to my extremely novice soldering and lack of knowledge about wires in general). Now, everything is in working order with the pots and output, so the problem is with the wires coming from the pickups. There are green, red, white, and black wires. The red and white seem to be connected together inside of a small roll of electrical tape (http://img451.imageshack.us/img451/9...ing003im5.jpg), the green is soldered back onto the place of the potentiometer that it came from originally, but I haven't a clue where the black one came from. My best guess is that it's a ground wire, which brings me to my question: Why is there no sound (yes I've tried turning the pots both ways to check the volume)? And if the black is a ground wire that I should ground, where should I solder it? Thank you for enduring my boring post.

Nighttrain1127 · #2 08-06-2007, 04:19 AM

With DiMarzios the black and white should be connected together Red goes to the respective center Pot lug and green is ground.

Yvarg · #3 08-06-2007, 10:11 PM

I have read the same thing, but I plugged in the pickups and everything when I first got them and everything worked fine (put them up to my bass strings to make sure). They came with the red and white wired together and the green . . . I think it was grounded, but whatever the case it was soldered to the back of a pot touching an orange wire. I am almost 100% positive that the black wire was soldered the same way but to the other pot. Should I switch them all around to match what you said? If so, which pot should the red be soldered to? Thank you.

Yvarg · #4 08-07-2007, 02:29 PM

I made this crappy paint diagram to show how it's all wired right now:

The only thing I'm not sure whether it was originally like that or not is the black wire.

Edit: According to this diagram http://www.guitarnucleus.com/gitschems/Pbass_wir.jpg I should have soldered that green wire not to the top of the pot, but to the bottom prong of it?

Edit 02: That green wire was the problem, it all works now. Sorry for wasting any of you guys' time.