Hey gents - 

I'm closing in on my first build and threw some strings on her last night. Man, this has rekindled my love for guitar. While my slide technique is sloppy, it was so great to hear sound coming out of her for the first time.

Surprisingly, without even plugging her in, she threw some good sound. She needs some tweaking to get the intonation and action right, but that's minor.

Tonight, I plugged her in for the first time but have no sound coming from the electronics. I'm running a simple setup (pickup, volume and input jack), thought I had it right but I've made a mistake somewhere along the line.

I checked wiring diagrams online but can't see what I"m doing wrong.

Here's what I can tell you:

1) The pickup came from China but has the same 'S' that Seymour Duncan has... not sure if this is a true SD pickup...

2) The wiring looks like this: black wire, a red/green soldered together and a white wire.

I'll post a photo of how I have it soldered but here's what I did:

1) Looking at the volume pot from the back (3 tangs), I have the far right lead soldered to the back of the pot as a ground.

2) THe middle the hot wire (I think) and goes to the input jack 'hot'

3) The left-most volume pot tang I have hooked up to the pickup 'white' (hot?) wire.

4) Black ground wire runs from the input jack ground to the back of the volume pot. I've also soldered the black wire from the pickup to this location.

5) The red and green wires coming off the pickup were soldered together. I just put some heat-shrink on these and left them

If I tap the pickup with my finger, I can hear some 'percussion' through the amp, but the strings don't resonate at all.

I'm completely green w/ electronics and appreciate any help.
Thanks!

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PS - Is there a way to test this harness without re-assembling the box and string things up again?

if you wire it up, then plug it in, if you tap it lightly with a screwdriver or similar, you should hear it

Mike, i think you have a humbucker, and if i'm correct , your two soldered wires are a common ground, the other 2 are positives, 1 from each coil, without a switch, just join then both at the left lug, and the soldered wires are your ground wire, it could also be the opposite, with a common positive, but either way should work

Thanks Darryl. So the red/green would just get soldered to the back of the volume pot? The white and black coming from the pickup get joined and soldered to the left lug?

Is there a way to test this out before re-assembly?

Cheers!

Hey Darryl - I did as you suggested (see photo) and still can't get any sound from the pickup. I can hear sound when I put the jack in and when I turn the volume put but nothing resonating through the pickup - not sure what I'm doing wrong... any ideas?

Thanks again.

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have you tried turning the pot knob while testing, it looks like it's been pretty hot, may be cooked, for a quick test, just run  wires from the pup to the jack temporarily by twisting them to the existing wires, [without unsoldering them], that  should by pass the pot, even though it's still connected,see if you have any sound then. I''ll  check here in 30 mins or so to see how you go

Hi Mike,

Seymour Duncan uses an odd wiring code where the black is positive, green is ground and you solder white and red together. The diagram should be attached.

If it is a copy of a Seymour Duncan pickup the wires could be different in which case you can use trial and error or get a cheap multimeter and look on YouTube for "humbucker pickup wiring and polarity" and you will find numerous videos on how to workout the layout of the humbucker wires.

Good luck,
David L.
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Hi David - 

Thanks for the image. I found that one as well. The strange thing is that the red/green came soldered together, so I'm not sure how relevant the SD wiring diagram is. Maybe this isn't even an SD pickup but just shares some sort of knock-off logo on the back. I'll try the multimeter route by way of YT.

Thanks again -

Mike

Looking at the pic of the jack (hard to see) it looks like you have one wire soldered directly to the inner ring and a free tab unused, and the other wire soldered to a tab.

a better pic would help, but my guess is you have both wires connecting to the sleeve and nothing connecting to the tip, i.e. both wires going to the jack's ground.

he has a white wire from the wiper contact going to the tip. he also has a white wire going from one end of the pot to the casing. he has the pickup coming into the top contact of the pot , so its all good there. the problem is as David L said the correct wires of the pickup connected together and the connected to the pot and ground. 

Thanks for confirming I'm not (way) out to lunch, Tim. Do you think the red/green wires that came soldered together could be positives and should be soldered to the left-most tang on the v/c? That would leave the white / black. This stuff hurts my coconut.. I need to learn to use a multi-meter. Cheers.

I don't know if this gives any more info as far as the ohm rating on the wires (or if someone can read Chinese!), but I found this, which is the exact pickup I have...

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/More-Colors-New-Designs-Mini-Humbuc...

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