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Piezoelectric are cool but what about regular pickup?

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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Permalink Reply by Jon Leslie/Runaway Veal Music on September 1, 2015 at 6:10pm

Great! Thank you again! I wish I made a lic plate guitar hah...

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Permalink Reply by John Sawyer on September 1, 2015 at 11:58pm

Put that on the list! I've made 2 so far and they're a lot of fun, but a lot more work than a simple CBG, since I haven't found a cigar box that fits a License plate, so I have to make the box..

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Permalink Reply by George Forster on September 2, 2015 at 12:33am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Jon Leslie/Runaway Veal Music on September 2, 2015 at 2:25am

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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Permalink Reply by Jon Leslie/Runaway Veal Music on September 2, 2015 at 4:54am

This is very useful and thank you. Any wiring diagrams very much appreciated!!

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Permalink Reply by Dan Sleep on September 2, 2015 at 6:55am

Every wiring diagram you could ever need:

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

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Permalink Reply by Bluesheart on September 2, 2015 at 9:38am

Thanks for the link Dan Sleep!

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on September 9, 2015 at 9:07am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Jon Leslie/Runaway Veal Music on May 22, 2016 at 9:51am

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...