I have looked at some wiring diagrams on this site..still confused. before I buy a new pickup from cbgitty I'd like to experiment with an existing old guitar not being used ...i have a few questions please 1. I have an old squire stratocaster that I'd like to use one of the 3 pickups for a cbg. I've never installed a regular pickup before. Do I just solder 2 wires to a 1/4" jack and that's it? Do I need a third wire to ground? 2. Which one of the 3 pickups would you use from a squire strat? Bridge pickup? 3. Which wire is hot ? Cold? I have no pics yet as I haven't dismantled the squire yet... Thank you and any advice appreciated.

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  • Regarding grounding strings...can't seem to think of a way to run a ground to strings as I am using a bolt and it's going to be unsightly ....unless I literally drill through the top of box to ground the bolt ...? I guess I can do this ...or find a screw inside the box to ground to...
    • Ground the strings at the tail piece where the strings connect/anchor.

  • Some of those Sguier pickups sound good, but if you don't like them you do a lot of mods to make them better. Change pot values, change the tone cap values, no tone circuit just volume, treble bleed circuits, bass and treble roll off circuits and varitone circuits. My favorite, is 2 single coil pups, one middle with a neck or bridge pup and wire them together in series as a humbucker. That makes them sound great to me, but requires changing to 500k pots and .022 caps.

    Lots of ideas, mods and schematics to be found on the internet.

  • Thanks for the link Dan Sleep!

  • Every wiring diagram you could ever need:

    http://www.seymourduncan.com/wiring-diagrams

  • You'll also need to ground the strings to the ground terminal on the jack. 

    • How please if no ground wire on pickup exists (only 1 wire on pickup) to ground to jack? Thank you
      • Somehow, you'll need to run a wire from the jack ground to the strings. If you have a metal tail piece, ground the tail piece.  If you are running strings through, you can glue a small copper plate to the spot where the strings go through the neck; drill holes so that ball ends rest on plate, with rest of string going through plate and neck. Solder a wire to the plate, and run that wire to the jack ground. Or, come up with your own adaptation. Just know that each string must be properly grounded, or it will act like an antenna, picking up all sorts of interference.

        • Thanks, I'm not there yet but it's good to know.
          I'll
          Probably be using pop rivets as string ferrules and attach a wire to a plate or the ferrules themselves ...not sure yet
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