"Black Guard "Tele Set

[DMW]

A friend of mine purchased a Fred Stuart set of "Black Guard" Tele pickups and is having a problem. First off, this is not being put here to be critical of a pickup maker but I'm hoping to understand why these may have been built as they were built.

Here's the problem, as he describes it:


Problem I can't figure out how to wire up the BG neck pup w/ the 3 wires (blk, wht and yellow). I ran the blk to the vol. pot. I put the wht wire to the switch (1st tab) but nothing. The pup only turns on when I put the yellow wire to the switch (1st tab). The white wire doesn't seem to make a difference anywhere. The pups will work BEAUTIFULLY in all 3 positions but the neck pup gives off a loud hum when I touch it. And moments after putting everything back together the neck shorts out and only the bridge works in pos. 1 & 2. I've taken it apart and rewired it several times using different combinations but the same thing always happens. The yellow has to go to the switch and then is shorts out soon after handling it.I've noticed that the shorting out seems to take place after I press or slightly move the neck pup, making me wonder if the pup itself has short.

I called my friend yesterday after reading this. I told him to tie the white and yellow together and solder those to ground (on the back of the volume control) and then use black as the "hot" lead. I told him next to reverse the leads of the bridge/lead pickup so the two pickups will work together in humbucking mode as they were designed. I couldn't get him to reverse the lead wires of the lead pickup but he said that after he did what I suggested to the neck pickup it worked fine, but he had the hollow "out-of-phase" sound with both pickups engaged, just as I knew he would. He since gave up on this Black Guard neck pickup and put another brand of neck pickup in the Tele - leads reversed to be compatible with the Fred Stuart pickup and he's going with that. Apparently these were purchased new and the builder wants $135 to re-wind the pickup if it has a problem. The assumption must be that it went out to the purchaser in fine working order.

Fred Stuart did tell him, via e-mail, that the yellow lead was to the metal pickup shield (just as I had supposed) and the white was the "hot" (these both come from the same solder point on the bottom of the pickup) and the black wire is said to be ground. My question is this: Why would the shield lead be tied to the "hot" side lead? When this guy touched the pickup cover he heard a loud hum. No wonder!

Any thoughts? Am I missing something?

[J S Moore]

I think that set is meant to be wired up using the "4 way switch mod" for series parallel. The yellow lead should only be attached to the cover and soldered to ground.

If both the white and yellow are attached at the same point the purpose of that escapes me.

[David Schwab]

If both the white and yellow are attached at the same point the purpose of that escapes me.

In case you have to reverse polarity or wire it in series. You can swap the two wires without worry about the shield going to hot.

DiMarzio does their Tele neck pickups like this.

[ShannonH]

In case you have to reverse polarity or wire it in series. You can swap the two wires without worry about the shield going to hot.

DiMarzio does their Tele neck pickups like this.

That's actually a cool idea. I'm working on a tele set with a local luthier, and we didn't know if the musician wanted hum cancelling or series wiring. When I told him how to reverse the ground, he looked confused. I may do this instead in the future. I think that it might be beneficial to actually include a wiring diagram though.