ShredAstaire Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 I'm installing new pickups and coil taps on each of them on my Epiphone SG... This is my first mod of any kind so while this type of thing may take an hour for some of you, i"m expecting it to take a lot longer for me hahaha. I've never done any soldering before and i'm finding it challenging. AndyR has given me some great advice and I will try to use all of it and i will fill you in on the result. (Hopefully its not a ruined guitar!) Wish me luck y'all1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chase1410 Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 I'm installing new pickups and coil taps on each of them on my Epiphone SG... This is my first mod of any kind so while this type of thing may take an hour for some of you, i"m expecting it to take a lot longer for me hahaha. I've never done any soldering before and i'm finding it challenging. AndyR has given me some great advice and I will try to use all of it and i will fill you in on the result. (Hopefully its not a ruined guitar!) Wish me luck y'all1 Good luck man...I like you have no exp. with a soldering iron, so I would love to hear how you do, since I've been wanting to do the same thing to one of my guitars..hope it turns out great! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riverside Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Soldering isn't difficult, but it is about "clean" and "enough". Start with a clean iron/tip, and make sure that while you get both components hot enough for the solder to flow, don't linger to the point that you get too much heat where you don't want it (wire insulation, etc.) And remember to make your physical connections tight before you add solder. Solder is not a substitute for structural integrity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff-7 Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Keep a damp rag nearby to occasionally clean off the tip of the soldering gun as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dem00n Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Good luck. Hijack thread time, can anyone confirm that if you leave the soldering iron to long on a pot that the pot can go bad due to, overflow of heat? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff-7 Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 I honestly don't know Dem00n I've never had it happen, as long as you're doing steady work to impart the heat to other objects I don't think there would be a problem really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surfpup Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Good luck. Hijack thread time, can anyone confirm that if you leave the soldering iron to long on a pot that the pot can go bad due to, overflow of heat? Confirmed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djroge1 Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Good luck. Hijack thread time, can anyone confirm that if you leave the soldering iron to long on a pot that the pot can go bad due to, overflow of heat? I've never had it happen. The questions is why would you want to keep it on any longer than needed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surfpup Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Wish me luck y'all1 Good luck. Take your time. Check everything carefully and repeatedly and all will go smoothly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dem00n Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 I've never had it happen. The questions is why would you want to keep it on any longer than needed? Good question, i dont know why someone would. But i was just curious. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShredAstaire Posted February 9, 2011 Author Share Posted February 9, 2011 I've never had it happen. The questions is why would you want to keep it on any longer than needed? My guess for that answer would be that some people may not know how long is needed, hence doing it too long. Hopefully I am not one of those peoples lol! Thanks for the tips, advice and support you guys...i didn't get a chance to work on it this evening but will try some tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MojoRedFoot Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 I'm installing new pickups and coil taps on each of them on my Epiphone SG... This is my first mod of any kind so while this type of thing may take an hour for some of you, i"m expecting it to take a lot longer for me hahaha. I've never done any soldering before and i'm finding it challenging. AndyR has given me some great advice and I will try to use all of it and i will fill you in on the result. (Hopefully its not a ruined guitar!) Wish me luck y'all1 Any idea what pups you're putting in? Or will that be a surprise as to minimize the fights that could break out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbreslauer Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 Confirmed +1. ESP on smaller effects sized pots. Sometimes solder doesn't flow too well, and it can frustrate one into overheating the component. :) Use the lowest wattage iron you can too. I just bought an adjustable power one to better control the temp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 All I can say is practice a lot before you do it. I admit.. I didn't practice at all. I just watched a couple YouTube videos and figured I'm pretty awesome and should be able to do it perfectly first try. I am awesome but I did a pretty sloppy job... It works perfectly but it's ugly. I'm not even going to post a picture. It's embarassing. I also burnt myself and the inside of my guitar. Burning mahogony smells good but not when it's your SG. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShredAstaire Posted February 9, 2011 Author Share Posted February 9, 2011 Hehehe its only an Epi. And it ain't gotta look pretty - its just gotta work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surfpup Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 I've never had it happen. The questions is why would you want to keep it on any longer than needed? Well, some of us learn by trial and error, mostly error in my case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShredAstaire Posted February 9, 2011 Author Share Posted February 9, 2011 Ya know....its more the wiring that is getting me confused than the soldering...ah jeez, what have i gotten myself into?! :) What wire goes where? lol... For example....in this diagram (http://www.guitarelectronics.com/product/WD2HH3T22_01/Guitar-Wiring-Gibson-dual-coil-tap-View-Download-Free), its talking about North/South Start/Finish wires. In the DiMarzio diagrams (http://www.dimarzio.com/media/diagrams/4Conductor.pdf), its talking about the colours...Red is Hot, Black and White (are unknown lol) and Bare and Green are ground. Anyone want to set me on the right path or should i just take it to a tech before i kill the axe? lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbreslauer Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 Ya know....its more the wiring that is getting me confused than the soldering...ah jeez, what have i gotten myself into?! :) What wire goes where? lol... For example....in this diagram (http://www.guitarelectronics.com/product/WD2HH3T22_01/Guitar-Wiring-Gibson-dual-coil-tap-View-Download-Free), its talking about North/South Start/Finish wires. In the DiMarzio diagrams (http://www.dimarzio.com/media/diagrams/4Conductor.pdf), its talking about the colours...Red is Hot, Black and White (are unknown lol) and Bare and Green are ground. Anyone want to set me on the right path or should i just take it to a tech before i kill the axe? lol which pickups did you get? basically, the 4 wires represent the ends of each of the two coils of copper in a humbucker: usually (!) you can create essentially a two wire pickup by connecting two of the ends together (creating one path through both of the coils). if you want coil split or phase options, that's where each of those 4 wires come in to play... in the dimarzio PDF: you can see that Red and Black wires are the two ends of the "North" coil (white bobbin), where Green and White are the ends of the "South" coil (black bobbin). if you connect black and white wires together, the green and red wires become the ends of a path that travels across both coils. does that help, or did i just make it worse? :) Don Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShredAstaire Posted February 10, 2011 Author Share Posted February 10, 2011 No that helps a little i think....but this wiring diagram make it look like i don't have enough wire and need to get some more...which is fine....but i am not 100% sure. I.E. That bottom pickup in the diagram shows the North Start go into the bottom "connection" of the push/pull pot but it looks like it splits and also gets soldered to the left "connection" on the bottom of the pot. How do I accomplish that? I expect I cannot "split" the wire I already have. God i feel dumb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShredAstaire Posted February 10, 2011 Author Share Posted February 10, 2011 Shred is discourage. Here's two pics of what it looks like now... I don't know why my brain can't figure this out... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbreslauer Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 Shred is discourage. I don't know why my brain can't figure this out... assuming you want the switch to tap BOTH pickups at the same time. think of the DPDT switch on the pot as two separate switches side by side, that get thrown together when the switch is changed. connect the red wires, green wires and bare wires up to your volume knobs and ground point just like you were wiring 2 wire pickups. then, connect the black and white wires from each pickup together at the middle lug of the DPDT switch on the pot: this way they still complete the circuit inside the pickup, but additionally either go to ground in one switch position or not in the other. you are correct you'll need some wire to connect the third lugs both together and to ground on the DPDT switch. be sure to keep the black and white wires from each pickup together on separate sides of the DPDT switch: don't cross the pickups up. the layout at seymour duncan is pretty good at showing how to do this: Duncan wiring layout (compared to the dimarzio document, the duncan diagram has the red and black wires swapped.) hope this helps! Don Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy R Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 Shred is discourage. Here's two pics of what it looks like now... I don't know why my brain can't figure this out... Shred, Check your PM's Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy R Posted February 11, 2011 Share Posted February 11, 2011 Ok I think I see what you have here so I made a picture and added numbers which will relate to an explanation So here is a bunch of theory that might help you out in the future. If you understand the signal chain and equate it to inputs and outputs you can work your way through about anything. Ok let's keep in mind a couple of things. Like someone previously said. Each pickup has 2 coils with 2 leads per coil. There is also a ground wire so each pickup should have 5 wires. let's say that on the bridge pickup the bottom coil closest to the bridge has a red wire and a black wire and the other coil has a green wire and a black wire. In theory you could only hook up one coil and not even use the other coil thus having a "Single Coil" ( let's say the coil closest to the bridge for example) if you hooked up the red wire to the volume control and the black wire to ground the pickup would work like a single coil. Now we want to make this work like a humbucker thus having both coils "on" at the same time. In theory you could hook up the other two leads from the other coil in this example green and white by running the white wire to another volume control and grounding the green wire. The problem with this is then you would need 4 volume pots to make both pickups "Humbucking" So Instead of this and to use one volume pot per pickup you wire the 2 coils together in "Series" so that the two coils can be controlled at the same time by one volume control. So to connect them together you connect one of the wires from the bottom coil to one of the wires on the other coil thus creating a signal path between the two coils. In your case this would be the white wire and the black wire. If you are wiring normal ( no coil tap ) you just need to connect these together and put some heat shrink ( or black tape) around the connection ( so it doesn't ground out on anything) but it doesn't need to be connected to anything else. So now you have 3 wires remaining that need to go somewhere which wold be the ground wire which is the "bare" wire ( which is usually just soldered to the bottom of the pickup plate) the red wire from one coil and the green wire from the other coil. In your case the red wire would go to the lead on the volume control and the green wire and the bare wire would be grounded to the back of a volume control ( actually you can ground on the back of any pot) So a quick lesson on pots. A pot is just a variable resistor usually for humbuckers it is a 500K resistor. Pots also have 3 connectors lets call them from left to right 1 2 3 or Left ,Middle, Right. What is happening mechanically when you turn the pot is there is a piece inside the pot called the wiper which is also connected to the middle connector on the pot. You will notice that volume pots have one connection( usually the right one) "connected" bent and soldered or a short wire to the back of the pot. This is what actually makes it a "Volume" pot other wise it would just be a variable resistor. If you did not ground one of the connectors (also known as lugs) o the pot you would not be able to turn the volume completely down. So let's think of the volume pot as a clock. where the wiper (middle lug) is the second hand and lug 1 or left is 12 O'clock and lug 3 is 6 O'clock. Lets also say that 12 and 6 = 500K of resistance. Think as the minute hand ( the wiper) is at 12 O'clock and you have 500 K of resistance and as it moves towards 6 O'clock the resistance is decreasing from 500K to 0 as it approaches six ( this would be what you would see if you were measuring lug 1 with an ohm meter as this was happening the resistance from 6 O'clock or lug 3 would begin increasing in resistance incrementally toward 500K. So what happens when you ground one lug you prevent this from happening so that the signal is just gradually sent to ground and you don't hear it anymore... The resistance gradually reducing to ground is what creates a smooth volume decrease. Without the resistance tapering the pot would just be a volume on volume off knob... So you can also think of the lugs on a volume pot as lug 1 being an input and the wiper (lug 2 or middle) being an output and lug three as being an off switch. If you equate your wiring as input to output we can follow the signal path logically Lets start with your pick up as being an input for the output of the strings. The pickup wires then becomes output that need to get to the output jack of the guitar. You could feasibly hook up a single pickup directly to the output jack and go directly into the input of your amplifier. Problem with this is you then have no volume, tone or pickup selection capabilities... Nikki Sixx actually pretty much did this with his Bass. It was full on or full off no volume control! So assuming we want things like volume control, switching and tone control we have to add some components and run "Input" to "Output" through these components until we eventually get to the output jack of the guitar. Along with signal input to output we need to think of the electrical flow which is positive and negative or another way to think is hot and ground. Any time you take electricity to ground you are shutting off the signal to the output. So starting back at the pickup... when the string vibrates across the pickup ( which is a small electromagnetic based transformer you are creating a small amount of electric AC voltage which we can think of as signal. This electrical signal is transferred through the coil wires on the pickup as an output signal. In order for this to work one side of the coil has to be grounded. In your case the red wire is hot or positive(signal output) and the green wire goes to ground ( along with the pickup ground wire Bare wire) Then the black and white wires are just sharing the signal together so that both coils are on at the same time. So the first thing you want to be able to do is control the volume of the output signal so you connect the red wire of the oickup to the "Input" of the volume pot which is lug 1. Now you need to take the output of the volume control and send it somewhere. You could feasibly hookup the wire that runs to the output jack to this lead and you would be good to go with a working pickup with volume control out to your amp. Since you want to be able to have tone control and you have another pickup we need to send that output signal to a few more components before we go to the output jack. So you connect the output lug (middle) of the volume control to the input lead of the 3 way selector switch. The three way connector switch is essentially 3 inputs 1 for each wire from the pick up and one that gets physically connected when the switch is in the middle position which then sends the signal to the output of the switch which is connected to the "Input" or "Tip" of the output jack. So what about the tone control??? Well the tone control acts as sort of an "insert" into the signal chain. Since the tone control pot does not have lug 1 or 3 grounded it acts as a "signal pass through" The capacitor is connected from the middle lug ( output ) to the ground on the volume control. Since the pot does not go directly to ground the signal is passed through the capacitor which slowly rolls off the high frequencies but never sends the signal to ground. So the output of the pickups is shared by the volume and the tone control via an electronic principle based on electricity wanting to take the path of least resistance. This how it acts as a pass through. There is also one very important connection in a passive pickup guitar and that is the ground to bridge. It is also what makes passive pickup electric guitars dangerous. In buildings with poor grounding there can be voltage leaking into the ground wiring of the building sending this back through ground back to you. I have literally had arcs of electricity jump between a microphone and my lips before and it was enough to dim the lights (Ouch!). In a passive pickup guitar you become part of the ground loop when you touch the strings. The bad thing is since you have both hands touching the strings sometimes this can cause electricity to pace from one hand to the other and taking your heart out on the way. This is a very rare thing to this extreme but more common than you think when playing in bars to get some pretty mean shocks. So a little advice if your ever hoeing up electricity anytime is to only have one hand on what your working on so if you do get a shock it doesn't travel through your heart. Anyway back to guitars... So if you ever notice a guitar that has a slight hum that does not go away when you touch the strings you should check for a disconnected bridge ground. If you look at the schematic and think your way all the way through the grounding path you will see that all components need to have to be grounded together this is all tied to the ground on the output jack which is connected to the "Sleeve" of the guitar cable, the cable ground is connected inside the input of the jack on the amplifier which has it's own internal grounding scheme that eventually goes through the third prong on the electric cable that gets hooked into the ground of the electrical jack in the building your in. The building is eventually grounded by literally a Copper pipe that is driven deep into the ground outside... Thus the term "ground".... If you don't ground the back of the jacks and switches and pickups etc... you will get popping, buzzing, and scratchy sounding pots... So now the grand finally.... How does my coil tap work with the push/pull pot. Well as you can see from the picture you basically just have a normal pot which just replaces your volume pot that has an attached switch. What you are doing is connecting the black and white wires to the switch and when you pull up on the switch the black and white wires are sent to ground cutting off the signal path of one coil... That's it.... So since you have 2 sets of connectors the only thing you need to do is leave the neck pickup wired as normal to it's own volume control and just connect the black and white wire to the switch of the push/pull pot. Hope this helps.... Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShredAstaire Posted February 11, 2011 Author Share Posted February 11, 2011 Damn Andy, you the man. Thank you so much for putting that together. I really appreciate it!! I'm gonna go give this a try right now methinks!! Seriously though...thank you so much! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy R Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 I don't smell any solder fumes! What's the scoop man?! Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.