Guitarheads on a 5 way switch

[mammothtusk]

Hi there,

I recently got a pair of guitarheads z-buckers and wanted to put them in an ibanez rg (3 pickups h-s-h).

I've wired many pickups before but these confuse me. I've got them to work on the far neck and far right positions only. The single coil is all wired up as usual and working in all 3 positions that its meant to. Its just getting the humbuckers to work with the single.

I assumed they'd wire up like dimarzio etc but they seem to be different.

Can anyone help out and say how I'd need to wire them to get the usual ibanez 5-way positions to work?

(i.e neck + middle single coil and bridge + single coil).

I tried the guitarheads website and it wasn't much help so ill be grateful for anything!

cheers in advance!

[Deleted]

Doesn't this : www.guitarheadspickups.com/wiring/wiringhb.htm work?

[sumgai]

mt,

Welcome to The NutzHouse! ;D

If I Recall Correctly, the Ibby RG's employed a non-standard 5-way switch. The first thing I'd do, and what you should do, is make sure the switch works the way you expect it to. By that I mean, you should unsolder everything from it, and take resistance measurements from each terminal to the one known as 'Common', moving the selector lever through the 5 positions. Take notes (better: fill in a blank chart, that makes it easy), and then report back with what you find out. In that way we can give you a definitive diagram, if the switch is not standard.


Errrr... I am assuming that you do have a meter of some sort - do you? If not, then buzz down to the local hardware store (even box stores like Lowes, Menards, Home Depot, anything like that) and snatch up a $10 or $15 unit - that'll be good enough for your guitar-Nutz purposes. Radio Shack also has 'em, but you spend more moolah for the same quality, so.....


HTH





sumgai

[newey]

Tusker-

Can anyone help out and say how I'd need to wire them to get the usual ibanez 5-way positions to work?

(i.e neck + middle single coil and bridge + single coil).

Well, let's first define what we mean. I'm not sure about the RG models, but my Ibby S470 (likewise HSH), as well as every other Ibby HSH I've played, splits the HBs in positions 2 and 4 of the 5-way.

The special switch that sg refers to (known as an "OTAX" switch) does exactly that. It looks like this:


Is that what you have?

So, when you say "the usual Ibanez 5-way positions", do you mean "Neck split-coil + middle", and similarly "Bridge split coil + middle SC". Or, were you contemplating the full HBs plus the single coil in positions 2 and 4?

And, what do you, in fact, have at positions 2 and 4 now? Just the middle SC alone?, i.e., no output from either HB in those positions? It would be very odd to get the full HBs working at positions 1 and 5, and then nothing at 2 and 4.

If you have not done so, please perform a "tap test" with a screwdriver to verify exactly what coils are operating in all 5 switch positions.

[mammothtusk]

cheers for the responses!

I didn't realize ibanez did that with their selector switches. That switch had been taken out from mine (there were dimarzios in it originally and had a custom wiring job done by the previous owner. It was a mess frankly! and i let him keep the dimarzios)

I've put the original ibanez switch back in and with that I've got the neck pickup working full correctly on 1st and splitting correctly on the 2nd position.

Its just the 4th position that isn't working right. I've got full bridge working fine on 5th position but getting a rather unusual tinny sound from the 4th. I would assume thats a short of some kind or some other wiring error that I'll figure out once I'm more awake.

Thanks everyone for the help

[newey]

Its just the 4th position that isn't working right. I've got full bridge working fine on 5th position but getting a rather unusual tinny sound from the 4th. I would assume thats a short of some kind or some other wiring error that I'll figure out once I'm more awake.

Could be, or it could be that you have the single bridge coil wired out-of-phase with the middle pickup.

Again, please use a tap test and report back which coils are "sounding out" at position 4. Bear in mind that it can be difficult on the HB to tell if both coils are operable or just one. But there usually is an audible difference if you check both HB coils in both positions 4 and 5.

If the correct coils are operating at position 4, it may then be necessary to test for phase.

[sbgodofmetal]

You can do this with a standard fender 5 way switch by choosing which hb coils you want to blend with the middle single coil and just simply wire the two remianing coils on the opposite side of the switch, but there's just one draw back to that if you wire the two commons together as per standard strat wiring you'll still get full on hbs in two and four, to eliminate this you could switch out your volume pot for a push pull pot, run the main common straight to the volume pots input lug and the secondary hb common to either the top or bottom of the switch portion of the pot (your preference there) and run a wire from the middle lug to the volume input lug. Then when you want humbucking in one and five (if you wired it to the top of the switch) just pull the volume knob up. To get just one hb coil and middle jush push it back down or vice versa pending on which side of the switch you decided on.

Now the good part about doing it this way is you can get the standard three sc effect full hbs at one and five plus full hb and middle sc at two and four giving you more tonal options with just a push or pull of a switch.


HTH