help welding wires from a portable guitar i'm making

[brylidan]

hi, i'm making a portable guitar, i'm stuck at the welding part, i only want to have the pickup conected to a  volume controller and the output jack  .  the pickup is a humbucker from a low tier ibanez gio  it has 4 cables,  red white black and a fat black cable . the volume controller says  b250k i got it from a friend so it came with a white cable welded in the middle leg  and  other in the back of it, as shown in the image. i just need to finish welding it all. so i was wondering if i could get some help.   imgur.com/a/0i2FjAF  thanks

[newey]

@bryliden-

Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!

While I understood your meaning, the term in English is "soldering" not "welding".

Ibanez has used different pickups over the years, and I wasn't able to find any information on one with only three conductors (i.e., wires). It may be necessary to test it with a multimeter to be sure which coonections go where. Also, if this pickup was pulled from an old guitar and you've never heard it, a meter check will at least tell you that it is working before you go to the trouble of installing it. If you weren't the one who removed it, knowing it was working, well, maybe someone else had a good reason for taking it out.

Most humbuckers (modern ones, at any rate) will have 4 conductors, and I find myself wondering if yours isn't missing a wire there.

I would also want to check the connections for the wires already soldered to your volume pot. You can reuse those, but it's a good idea to check for continuity first. Assuming those connections are good, then the wire which is connected to the center (called the "wiper") lug of the volume pot will be soldered to the tip connection of the output jack, and the wire connected to the right-hand lug, as shown in your diagram, will be connected to the jack's sleeve connection. That lug is also bent back and soldered to the case of the pot- leave that as it is.

The "hot" (i.e., the + connection) for the pickup will be soldered to the empty lug on the volume pot. The - wire, which will be the ground, will be soldered to the back of the volume pot case (or you can just solder it to the right-hand lug if that is easier, since that is also connected to the pot's shell). Our trouble is that we don't know which wires are which for your pickup without testing it.

If I had to guess, I would guess the red wire is the +, both black wires get grounded to the pot shell, and the white wire doesn't get connected to anything- but I'm making a bunch of assumptions saying that, so I wouldn't start soldering anything just yet. Do you have (or can you borrow) a multimeter to check things?

[reTrEaD]

May 8, 2023 5:30:24 GMT -5 newey said:

Ibanez has used different pickups over the years, and I wasn't able to find any information on one with only three conductors (i.e., wires).

Unfortunately, Ibanez deleted wiring diagrams from their support site, so those will be difficult to find. I do remember several Ibanez diagrams with 3-wire plus ground wiring and a few with the (-) wire bonded internally to the ground wire.

It was more common to see white as the (+) and red as the series link.
But I remember seeing a drawing where red was (+) and white was the series link and iirc that was also an Ibanez drawing.

My suspicion is, white will be the hot in this case, red will be unused, both blacks will go to ground. But it would be unwise to act on a suspicion. An inexpensive digital volt-ohmmeter should be available pretty much anywhere in the world.


EDIT:
Found an Ibanez diagram where they use different color codes for two HBs in the same guitar.
So ... resistance measurements on brylidan 's pickup will definitely be needed.

SPOILER: Click to show

The neck pickup has red as hot, white as series link.
The bridge pickup has white as hot, red as series link.

[brylidan]

thanks all for your help, i managed to do it.   i added a ground cable  soldered  to the bridge of the guitar so reduce static noise. 


imgur.com/a/kSeZrCQ