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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on August 9, 2014 at 3:12am

The five wires are there for pickup mods. Not knowing what brand pickup you have it's hard to say what wire should go where.

Here's a couple of links that might help.

This one is for using a meeter to find out what wire does what,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nntdej_Qj6k

This one lists a lot of pickup makers and their wire colors

http://www.1728.org/guitar8.htm

For just a normal pickup the two grounds are soldered together and sent to ground. ( in this case it's the black and outside shielding ) Two wires that are used for pickup mods are then soldered together and wrapped up. The single 'hot' wire is used for the overall output of the pickup.

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on August 9, 2014 at 3:16am

Sorry double post.

I can't tell but looking at the pick I'm guessing the green and white wires are soldered together? if so wrap tape around them. Use the red as your hot and ground the silver outside shield wire to ground.

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Permalink Reply by Skeesix on August 9, 2014 at 4:50am

Yes, I would also guess red for hot (lead) and silver for ground. You can always get some of those alligator clip test wires and hook it up temporarily to the jack and then plug it into the amp and see if it works properly.

You can either tap on the pickup to see if it makes a noise, or hold the pickup right above your guitar's strings and strum to see if it makes a sound.

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Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on August 9, 2014 at 5:56am

The green and white will be the inside of each coil. Grab a multimeter and you'll find (if you break the connection between white and green of course) that one of them has continuity to the red wire, and the other to the ground.
You can indeed just leave them soldered together, wrap that join in tape so it doesn't accidentally short anywhere, and this will work just as the original humbuckers...
Alternatively you can put a dpdt switch in there to flip HOW the two connect (in series or in parallel )
This is a great mod to consider especially if this is to be the only pickup in the guitar.
Another common mod (and one that you could do with the same switch if you went for a triple throw one..) is to short one the coils right out at the join there, which makes the bucker into a (relatively weak) single coil..


About your wiring diagram...
Just some friendly advice, not an attack at all ok?... By joining your ground connections on the back of the pot there you are making this solder join absolutely crucial to your circuit. Now soldering to the back of a potentiometer is tricky. Have you ever noticed how it's this join that so often fails? It's because the little lugs are actually designed to solder to, they're nice and thin and heat up super fast. The pot chassis on the other hand is not designed for this, it's difficult to get a small spot of concentrated heat, especially when being mindful that there is a small and cheaply manufactured mechanism of moving parts including a wafer thin conductive... well wafer lol.. Right there.. Something most guys probably haven't stopped to consider is that this connection (to the pot chassis) is entirely optional, it just shields the pot itself.. Optional that is until you make up a diagram that makes it absolutely critical. So many guys pass these around without careful thought.. Why not join the ground wires at the lug on the pot and just add a small jumper to the chassis? If it fails at least your circuit will still work eh ;) (Same thing goes for grounding tone circuits there. Everyone does it. But I bet none of em can explain why heh. )

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Permalink Reply by J Lee on August 12, 2014 at 1:42am

Thanks Phrygian - as always a really thorough answer!

Much appreciated mate

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