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1st Bass rebuild- wiring help

OneAri

OneAri

Jan 1, 2013
93
3
Brighton, UK
#1
Hey guys I'm rebuilding a beater to take on a charity project trip to Ghana but being my first bass rebuild I started at the bottom..

A Squier Bronco :hiding:

The old pickup badly needed replacing and quick look over TB suggested I get a Duncan HotRail for Strats. Having never wired a guitar up before I took the whole assembly in to the store I bought the PUP from to see if they could wire it in, they wanted £40 which seemed a bit steep for what could possibly be a matter of a couple of bits of soldering :rollno:

The old pickup was a simple 2 connector (1 black 1 white) setup wired straight from the tone pot, the new PUP is a 4 bit-connector (Red,Green,Black and White). My question being really how do I wire this up (being an absolute amateur and all that..)and assuming I only use 2 of the connectors do I solder the 2 surplus ones off and tape them as if they were ground wires?

Any help is greatly appreciated
Thanks :)
 
#2
For series wiring, the north coil's positive-phase lead is the hot, and the south coil's negative-phase lead gets grounded. The north coil's negative-phase lead and the south coil's positive phase lead go together.

For parallel wiring, both positive-phase leads are hots, and both negative-phase leads are grounds.
 
#3
The Bronco is single coil single pickup so I'm going to go ahead and say it's wired in series (I'm most likely wrong, again)? Would this mean I ground the Red & Green connectors, Seymour Duncans own wiring diagrams don't illustrate it's use for basses, which is reasonable.
Again any help is hugely appreciated
 
#4
OneAri said:
The Bronco is single coil single pickup so I'm going to go ahead and say it's wired in series (I'm most likely wrong, again)? Would this mean I ground the Red & Green connectors, Seymour Duncans own wiring diagrams don't illustrate it's use for basses, which is reasonable.
Again any help is hugely appreciated
Click to expand...

A single coil pickup, by definition, has one coil. There are generally only three times you will ever see more than two conductors. V+​ leads for active pickups, separate ground leads for internally shielded pickups, and leads for coil taps.

Are you sure it's not a stacked or split humbucker in a single coil casing?
 
#8
Guys - what are you doing?
Why make it so complicated for a newby when the answer is so simple ...

Here is the right diagram:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

It doesn't matter that your PU looks different!
Your PU is an SD humbucker - and the one in the graphic too.
You may not have a bare wire - so, just solder green to ground (housing). The black wire goes to HOT (left lug of the volume pot). White+Red are soldered together an are then isolated with tape (or shrink tube).

Don't care about the 500k!
Take your pots. Only if you want to have more hight later, change the pots. The cap value also doesn't matter (if you like yours). Try it!
So only wire the PU as shown.

If your white wire of the old PU was not at the left lug, solder the black SD wire to where the "old white" was.

"Old Black" = "New Green"
"Old White" = "New Black"
(White+Red together and isolated).

Call if your new PU has much too much output!
There are two ways you decrease the output ...

EDIT @ OneAri: I once was in Brighton on my motorbike - but that's 16 years ago ...
I also know a singer who lives in Brighton now! Saw her first as a solo singer & guitar player in Canterbury the same year. She has a nice video on youtube, filmed at Brighton Beach? If you ever see her, greet her from her "old German fan". More infos via PM if you like ...
 
#9
If you don't want to do the wiring, could you do the removal and installation of the pickup and just have them do the soldering? They might do it a bit cheaper since most of the money is actually the labo(u)r (time) getting the old one out and the new one in.
 

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