What should I do with a EMG J "humbucker"?

[hrbassji]

So, at sometime last year, I bought an American Deluxe P-Bass with EMG's installed in it. I removed the EMG's and installed the original electronics. However, the previous owner had made the infamous 2 Jazz Humbucker with two EMG LJ pickups, but only one of them was hooked up. One was just there for looks.

So, my question is, what can I do so that I use both pickups in the setup shown below? Any innovative ideas are welcome! I'm looking for just adding another pickup, perhaps another EMG J, P, or 35.

[Matthijs]

I don't think I understand your question. Do you want to use those two EMG j's, or do you want suggestions for something else to replace those two pickup's?

[hrbassji]

I want to use the EMG pickups in the picture in a setup with another EMG pickup.

[Stealth]

There are two useful things you can do just with that "Dual-J" pickup. You can wire the two in parallel and treat them as a proper humbucker wired in parallel, or you could wire them to a 2-way or 3-way switch that would switch parallel/"single-coil" or "neck-J"/parallel/"bridge-J". Sadly, since the EMG pickups are internally active and made as simply as possible, they cannot be wired in series.

As for combining with another pickup, I'd get a EMG P pickup and mount it in reverse, with the EA coil closer to the bridge and the DG coil closer to the neck. Then I'd wire the whole lot (with the parallel/"SC" switch) as a Vol/Vol/Tone to keep it simple.

[hrbassji]

That sounds like what I had in mind, now my problem is, how do you wire that up?

From what I've gathered, you would have the P to a volume and then the two J pickups to a switch, then volume. But how do you wire that switch? And, does it matter if it's a passive switch, or would I need an EMG active switch?

[Stealth]

There's no such thing as an active switch. A switch just lets the signal flow through some pins in one position, and through others in another position.



The top right corner is what you need. If you use the first or second switching diagram (with parallel and one of the coils) you can do that using a push/pull put. If you want all three options, you'll have to have a separate, on-on-on DPDT switch.

Diagram courtesy of line6man.

[hrbassji]

OK, perfect, thank you. So then after the switch, I would just wire the two 25k volume pots (switch and P pickup) and then run them to a tone/preamp, correct?

[Stealth]

Exactly like that.

[walterw]

unfortunately, those two Js jammed together like that with no series option means that the sound differences between one, both in parallel, or the other will not be that big.