First Act/Jackson

[vwxyz67]

I have a humbucker that i took out of a jackson dinky and im trying to put it in a first act single pickup guitar. My problem is that the jackson (pickup) has three wires coming out of it (red, black, bare) and the first act, only two (red and bare). what do i wire to what? maybe im overlooking something simple as this is the first time ive switched pickups in anything. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks,

Hunter

[newey]

Hunter-

Hello and Welcome!

The original pickup shares the shield (the bare wire) with the signal "ground". The Jackson 3-wire has a separate ground, with the bare wire only acting as a shield.

Assuming this is a single V + T set-up, with no switching going on, the red wire from the pickup should go to one lug of the volume pot as originally wired. The red wire from the Jackson goes there as well.

The bare wire goes to the back of one of the pots. The black wire can do so as well, or it can go to the negative lug of the jack, anywhere that's grounded.

Now, if you want to get a bit fancier, a simple switch can be added to give you parallel/series between the coils of the pickup (in other words, I'm encouraging you to get nuttier with this build!)

[vwxyz67]

I would be interested in that IF this guitar was routed for more than the essentials (pickup, volume, tone, and jack) There is NO emphasis on the NO surplus space to do anything on this guitar and i dont have proper tools to make incisions in this thing. HOWEVER, id be interested in knowing how this would be done for if i 'inherit' such a tool i could make this possibel. ALL information is encouraged. Thanks,
Hunter

[wolf]

Hello Hunter,
Even if there is no room in there, you still have one alternative:
a push-pull "pot" with an attached DPDT switch. The problem here is that the guitar cavity needs sufficient depth so that it can fit in a potentiometer with an attached DPDT switch. If you have an extremely thin guitar (for example a Gibson SG) then a push-pull pot will not fit.

One other thing, if you do decide to put a series / parallel switch on the humbucker, you'll have to convert it to a 4 wire humbucker and it is done like this: www.1728.com/guitar1a.htm

By the way that is on my website.

And welcome to Guitar Nutz™

[vwxyz67]

I have successfully switched pickups in this thing and it sounds great. I appreciate all the help. More mods for this one on the way, maybe more pickups and a tremolo bridge. Thank you again for all the help.