Newbee questions rewiring humbuckers

[Tabula Rasa]

Hi,

I just registred here because I couldn´t find the answers on a dutch Guitar Forum I usualy hang out.

Sorry for my english, i knw it`s bad.

i´ve been building guitars for years, but recently I started wiring pickups. Did some singlecoils which work fine. Recently I rewired a set humbuckers from epiphone. I removed the wire from 1 coil en rewound it with less windings en did that pretty sloppy. (same type of wire, 0.63mm thick). There was a big difference in resistance between both coils in each humbucker.. I did not waxpot the humbuckers en they sounded better than the exact same set I tryed. It sounded fuller, rounder.

I still have a few questionsą

1 I have 2 humbuckers, both north orientated at the screws. In a HSH guitar, and a superstrat wiring this is perfect, but in a HH guitar, in the inbetween position it just sounds crappy. My idea is to turn the magnet around en turn the wires per coil around (ground, 1, 2, 3, 4 becomes Ground 2,1, 4, 3). Is that going to work out fine?

2. I also have a thinner wire here. Its also a PE coated copperwire but a little thinner, 0.05mm. What would happen when i rewire 1 coil with the thinner wire? More resistance, warmer sound? More high in the sound?

Should i rewire the slugsbobbin or the screwbobbin? When i use the splitted sound, the screwbobbin is the active one.

Thanks

I´m planning to put two humbuckers in this buildą



i have two epiphones from al Wilshire laying around with Alnico II magnets and want to do some modding, just to get some experiece and have some fun.

[Tabula Rasa]

Here are some of my DIY from scratch builds

[big_teee]

Welcome
You can wire them anyway you like, or you can keep up with.
Pretty much the standard On Humbuckers, are all coils wound CCW, and North edge of the magnet to the slug side.
Hot lead on the start lead of the slug coil.
Wiring Diagram
Can Wire like these.
Wiring Diagram
Wiring Diagram
This layout would have the slugs active on split.
Seymour duncan has lots of layouts, pick the ones you want.
http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/
T

[Tabula Rasa]

Thanks!

I´ve used the Duncan site many times. how to do the wiring inside the guitar isn´t the problem. The green strat has a rotary with series, split paralel... wiring the pickguard isn´t the problem. The wiring inside the humbucker, thats what i want to know more about.

thinner wire, what would that do? Which bobbin? turning the magnet and the wires around in a HH guitar, would that give a strat inbetweensound when splitted?

[Lyrebird Steve]

I asked the same question about what would happen winding the two bobbins with different wire types and this is the response I got

If you want [to wind a humbucker] with two different gauges, just wind both with the same number of turns and it will hum cancel. DC resistance has nothing to do with it. It's the number of turns that counts.

[Tabula Rasa]

Don't care much about humcanceling or humreducing. I like humbuckers for their thicker sound and the ability to split, put tem in series or parallel.

[big_teee]

Very nice Guitars.
I read this, and don't know what the numbers are? Colors maybe?
" My idea is to turn the magnet around en turn the wires per coil around (ground, 1, 2, 3, 4 becomes Ground 2,1, 4, 3). Is that going to work out fine?"
If both pickups are wound the same and the magnets oriented the same, and they are both wired the same then it should be fine.
You said that the two pickups didn't sound good when played together.
That is an indication of the two pickups being out of phase with each other.
If that is the case then both of the pickups are not wound the same direction, or wired the same, or magnets oriented the same, and are out of phase.
Beyond that you will need to do what we all do, and that is a lot of trial and error, and lots of testing.
I like to refer humbucker questions to this diagram.
The colors don't matter, but the internal wiring and orientation do.
In the diagram coil 1 would be the slug coil.
humbucker pickup polarity - Google Search
Good Luck,
T

[mcgruff]

Arrows show direction of magnetic field; coils show direction of wind; blue are coil starts red are coil finishes.

If the coils are wound in the same direction, they're humbucking and in phase when you connect screw finish to slug finish.

The out of phase tone can be useable sound, particularly with overdrive, and it's one of the options in Jimmy Page wiring.

[Mark Hammer]

I recently made myself a guitar, starting with an Epiphone resissue Wilshire Pro body I bought off a fellow. One of the disadvantages of bodies like that - and the SG is included in that family - is that when the neck is joined to the body so high up, the neck pickup has to be moved away from the end of the fingerboard to give the neck tenon at least a little bit of room to grab the body securely.

Those guitars are also short scale. The result of having a short scale, and requiring the neck pickup be pushed back a bit, means that the distance between neck and bridge pickups is reduced, and the tonal contrast is also reduced.

One way of addressing that, which Epiphone used, is to use mini-humbuckers. The individual pickups take up less room, so there is greater effective distance between the sensing areas of the neck and bridge PU, and the potential for a little more tonal contrast.

What I did with mine was take advantage of the Duncan P-Rails pickup. These are HB-sized units, and the body was routed for a pair of PAF-sized humbuckers. However, what I did was wire them a little differently than many do. Here is a shot of the guitar (hopefully it shows up, because I can't see pics from work):


The P-Rails are dual-coil pickups with a P90 "core" and a blade pickup on one side. They can be used in any of 3 modes: P90, HB, blade-only. I oriented the pickups such that the blade coils were farthest away from each other. Instead of the Wilshire's dual vol/tone, I wired up a single master vol/tone, and left some space for a pair of toggles. The SPDT (on-off-on) toggles allow me to select mode for each pickup independently. This is particularly handy for N+B settings, where there are nine different combinations, all audibly different. If I want, I can set both pickups to blade mode, and the tonal contrast between neck and bridge is pretty clear.

There is certainly much to enjoy about regular humbuckers, and somethng useful to be gained by arranging to cancel coils. However, if one is attempting to get a broader palette of colours from a guitar that forces you to install pickups in cramped spaces, the Duncan P-Rails offer some interesting possibilities. I'm very pleased with mine.

[Tabula Rasa]

In reply number 2, there is a black sort of telecaster Deluxe with a PRail pickup from Seymour Duncan. Nice pickup but is doesn't sound like a P90, a single coil or a humbuckertje. 3 useable sounds, but not exactly what i think they should be like.