Ibanez Roadstar II Pickup HAAAALLLLP

[Vomicamonster]

I'm helping a friend with wiring an 80s Ibby. The cavity wiring is solid. There's an issue with the pickups sounding a little TOO thin/lowered output when switching out of series and into parallel/coil tap. He opened up the pup and found this.

What do you guys think? Spliced wrong? Which is north pole? south pole? Think a joint could be touching a pole piece when the pickup is screwed down? Thoughts?

 

[Vomicamonster]

both pickups. It looks like Ibanez wired opposite colors than their standard as far as the south pole goes. Am I reading this right?

 

[RobbieK]

Wow, that's really sketchy. I'd get rid of all those twist connections and pieces of white tape and start again. Try to save as much length of the red and black coil wires as possible. Go to a camping store and buy a cheap little compass to make sure that you actually have a north and a south coil for each pickup. (These pickups have clearly been hacked around, so if you don't actually have two norths and two souths, you may even have to remagnetize a coil or two. And for that matter, test the resistance too.) Then you'll need a multimeter to make sure the signals from all coils are in phase as well. Then you can reconnect the pickup leads and take it from there.

 

[Vomicamonster]

Ended up switching the the blue and yellow leads as far as wiring goes. Seems to have cleared up the thin phasing and output volume but there's a hum that is persistent. Everything is grounded accordingly.

Didn't think about using a compass. North/north and south/south pickups could cause hum? Similar in effect to same polarity Rickenbacker wiring?

Thanks for the input!

 

[RobbieK]

Yep. You need a north and a south coil for hum-cancelling.

And it's a good idea to have a north coil from one pickup and a south from the other, when they are in single coil mode.