Wiring help needed!

[e/mguitars]

Hey all, I'm at my wits end, hopefully someone here can help. Currently finishing up a bass build that uses a Scaller double J pickup, the one with 4 individual coils and 8 leads. My idea was to use stacked volume pots and wire each coil to it's own control, so that is what I have done. The color coding is such that if one was to use the pickup as two jazz pickups put together the brown wire would be hot, the green and yellow would be joined and the white would be ground. Since I wired each coil to it's own volume the brown and the white are both hot and the green and yellow were tied together and became the ground. Did this on both coils, ran the outputs of the pots to the tone pot, and then to the output jack, and here's where the trouble starts! When all four pots are turned all the way up there is almost no sound at all, back any one of them off and it works normally. Had reason to believe that the pot for the bridge side coil was compromised, so I ordered a replacement, installed it last night, and still have the same problem. Help, please, anyone! What did I do wrong?

 

[XLunacy]

the brown wire would be hot, the green and yellow would be joined and the white would be ground

the brown and the white are both hot and the green and yellow were tied together and became the ground

I have not checked the colour coding for these, but this does not seem right, your white wire was a ground and became a hot, so I think your coils are out of phase.

 

[Matt Liebenau]

I think @XLunacy might have it. Try switching the white and whichever other color is connected to that coil.

 

[e/mguitars]

I think @XLunacy might have it. Try switching the white and whichever other color is connected to that coil.

So, each half of the pickup is basically a split jazz, one half has the green and white wires, the other has the brown and yellow. On another thread here someone had suggested that making the brown and green hot, like you're suggesting, would wire them in parallel as opposed to the series wiring that I've done. It's worth a shot, I'll try it tonight!

 

[e/mguitars]

I have not checked the colour coding for these, but this does not seem right, your white wire was a ground and became a hot, so I think your coils are out of phase.

So, it turns out that I should not have trusted the info that I had regarding the color coding on the wiring. I took your advice, swapped the green and white wires to set up the coils in parallel, and it works! Thanks for your help!

 

[Matt Liebenau]

Glad you got it figured out. Hope it sounds great!

 

[e/mguitars]

Glad you got it figured out. Hope it sounds great!

Thanks, it does! I achieved what I had hoped to do, I can use the volume controls to have either jazz pickup, or both, and either p configuration or reverse p, which sounds particularly good! Happy boy!