Vintage Super Distortion

[Simon]

Heya folks, It has probably been asked a thousand times but I'm too lazy to go through old threads and posts.
I have 3 conductor super distorton pickup, black wire, white wire and drain wire. I wanna put it in my telly that has a humbucker in the bridge position.
The existing had two conductors.
How do I wire it in ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[spud1950]

What heck is a drain wire? Never heard that term used as to pickup leads. Is it a bare,uninsulated wire? If so, it's a ground wire and gets connected to a ground source, most commonly the back of a pot.

[Simon]

Yeah its the bare uninsulated wire :lol:
I wanna know where to put the black and white wires

[spud1950]

Traditional color coding is that black is ground,so it goes to back of a pot. White is hot and goes to the switch.

[Simon]

Please forgive my n00bness

I tried joining the black and bare together and soldered that to the back of a pot, white to the switch, and got nothing :shrug:

I have made resistance measurements of the pickup and all seems to be kosher.

I have had this pickup for years and had never installed it. Bought it from a Jackson's Rare Guitar Show in the early nineties.

After recent customisatons of my axe, I could put a humbucker in the bridge position.
I dug out this schmick ol' pickup and wanna drop it in to replace the average one the tech installed.

[daz]

Try just touching the bare wire to the tip of a cable plugged into a amp then touch the white wire to the tip and see if the pickup become active. You will know because it will make noise thru the amp when you handle it or tap on it. then do the same but this time with the black wire to tip. Also try the white wire to ground along with the bare and black to tip. If none of those works it may be damaged as in the winding being open. (broken) Sometimes color codes are opposite of the norm, IE:black being hot instead of gorund. So just play with the pickup wires and a cable into the amp like i said and if it's not broken you should be able to find a wiring that works very quickly without having to keep resoldering it in your amp.

[David Schwab]

What heck is a drain wire? Never heard that term used as to pickup leads. Is it a bare,uninsulated wire? If so, it's a ground wire and gets connected to a ground source, most commonly the back of a pot.

When you have a multi conductor cable, the bare wire is called a "drain wire" and attaches to the shield.

[Simon]

Cheers Daz, I was gonna do that as a last resort. Was just hopin' that someone had played about with one before.

[Simon]

What heck is a drain wire? Never heard that term used as to pickup leads. Is it a bare,uninsulated wire? If so, it's a ground wire and gets connected to a ground source, most commonly the back of a pot.

When you have a multi conductor cable, the bare wire is called a "drain wire" and attaches to the shield.

I come from a cabling background. Should have explained myself, cheers David

[Simon]

Its alive ! It's alive !
The pickup is Awesome
Sooo Ballsy.
Turned out the black was the hotwire

[David Schwab]

Turned out the black was the hotwire

Cool! I thought it was, but the vintage SDHB I have has been rewired to a 4 conductor cable so I couldn't remember.