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dumb question probably


alfsboy

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Having a quick poke round my Epi Dot SE ,there seems to be only one wire coming from each of the pickups ,a red from the neck and a black from the bridge .If I want to change pickups ,can I just snip the wires and rejoin with new pickups .I assume the wires carry more than one wire in the core .I am a competent wire man and will heat shrink the join but dont fancy digging out all the pots as they work well ,Its a new Dot so uses modern pots .Is this adumb question .

I throw my already poor reputation as an old fart on your mercy .

Thanks in advance

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If I remember correctly there are two wires in each pickup. One it hot and the other is the shield. I only have a diagram left over from the pickups I put in my Dot. You could cut the wires and resolder them and heat shrink the wires.

 

If I was going to do it that way, I would leave as much wire on the new pickup as posibble, just in case one of the pots goes bad in the future and you have to replace it, that way there will be plenty of wire to work with.

 

Not a dumb question. I haven't done it this way, but I don't see why it wouldn't work if the wires were soldered correctly.

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The wire is a coaxial...with inner conductor being positive and the outer conductor the "ground". As it's a simple two conductor arrangement, the only thing really affected by which way round the conductors are is signal phase with respect to the other pickup and absolute phase with respect to the output.

Although it's a practice that many would consider to be lazy...[or even sacriligious with an upmarket instruement] it's no big problem to cut and join the wires in the fashion that you suggest.

Would I prefer you to extract the wiring loom from your Dot and do it properly...of course. But it is a bit fiddly for the inexperienced and you can't be arrested for taking that particular short cut ;^).

Just make sure that your joins are tidy and sound so as to avoid any signal degradation or shorts caused by stray strands of wire.

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Have I misunderstood your question Lerxst ? :-s

 

You simply slide short lengths of heatshrink tubing over the wire before it's joined, slide it back over the completed join and blast it with a hair dryer . [higher powered heat guns in the wrong hands are best kept away from guitars !]

You obviously need the outer tubing around the whole cable [ to slide into place over the whole joint when you've finished] ...and a short length slid over the first conductor to cover the first joint before making the second.

You can also get that stretchy rubber insulating tubing...but it's difficult to use with the typically soft wires involved here.

 

Instinctively, and for the sake of correctness, you wouldn't want to fit pickups in this way. But in all honesty there's little wrong with it. With any pickup installation if you think you might at some point want to take them out again...don't shorten the wires significantly.

Some folks are also troubled by joining coaxial cables in this way because you lose the screening in the joint area.

In the context of a guitar, it's not an issue...and plenty of the four conductor pickups around today don't use screened cable at all.

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No, Smoke.. You didn't misunderstand.. I'm eventually going to change the pups on my Casino, and I don't relish the thought of fishing everything in and out of there... I've never had to consider splicing pickup conductors before, so I was unfamiliar with "heat shrink". I just planned on using electrical tape, like Glenn said..

 

Thanks.

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