Alnico Humbuckers

[chrissyinbkk]

A mate of my brother gave me these to try out, brand new, he has them in a guitar and they to me sound good, they are an Alnico Filteron..... I was going to put them in the LP I'm doing now, but... Humbuckers provided 2 connections... hot and earth... Alnico's... 4 connections each... one obviously the earth.. the other 3? can these just be twisted together or am I now talking push pull pots?

edit... the pic is bad of the wiring there are 2 wires in the black shielding the are the earths?

[Simon Barden]

This page is very useful - even if you have to read it a few times to understand it. http://www.1728.org/guitar1b.htm

Each humbucker is made from two single coils - so each coil has two connections, plus a baseplate which has a ground connection. This diagram (from that web page) shows the normal coil connections but excludes the baseplate (to which any pickup cover is soldered). Ignore the wire colours used for the moment as they vary between manufacturers.



For two-wire humbuckers, the signal hot wire is brought out (the + end of coil 1), the + end of coil 2 is is wired to the start (1 end) of coil 1 within the humbucker and the start (- end) of coil 2 is connected to the signal cable shield, as is the baseplate ground.

For 4-wire pickups, there are normally 4 wires plus a screen, (and the screen is normally a braided connection enclosing the other 4 wires.). If they don't simply come with all 4 wires plus the screen loose, then they normally come with the pickup ground wire (- end of coil 2) plus the screen connected together, the pickup hot wire (+ end of coil 1) separate and the coil 2 finish (+) and coil 1 start (-) wires that would normally be connected together at the pickup in a 2 wire pickup, are brought out and normally twisted or soldered together. If the pickup is only to be used as a humbucker, then these can be taped up with insulating tape and ignored.

But this pair can be connected to ground via a switch (or not) and used to coil tap the pickup so only one coil is connected.

If you want to mess about with series/parallel or phase reversal, then you need all the wire-ends separate.

So it would be useful to see all the wires - but I'd imagine that the black is the signal hot wire, and the rad and white wires are the screen and pickup ground connections, whilst the two coil connection wires are connected under the heat-shrink insulation.

If you have a multimeter and I'm correct, you should get a near zero ohm reading if you measure from the pickup casing to the red/white wire tip and somewhere in the 6-10k ohm region from the casing to the black wire tip.

If so, the red/white wire goes to the back of the pot and the black wire to the potentiometer lug.

If not, then a picture showing all the wires will help and we start again.

[chrissyinbkk]

Thanks Simon, I'll get that meter out and test the readings first

[chrissyinbkk]

Right, these are the wires... hopefully a better pic..

[chrissyinbkk]

and this is the damn meter I haven't learnt to use properly yet

edit..dunno why but the pic keeps getting cropped to show only the top part..there is an ohm range 2M, 200k...2k...200))))

[chrissyinbkk]

only reading i seem to get is from the back of the pup to the red and white wire is 3.6, same from the back to the thin black wire is 7.25, from the back of the pup to the 2 bare twisted wires is 0.1

[Simon Barden]

OK, all the info is there.

The thin black wire is the signal wire (7.25k ohms DC resistance), the red and white wires are the centre coil connection (roughly half the total DC resistance) at 3.6k ohms DC resistance), and the 2 bare twisted wires are the cable screen and signal ground. So for simple humbucker use, just put some heat shrink or insulating tape over the bare ends of the red/white wires, connect the 2 bare twisted wires to the back of the volume pot and solder the black wire to the input lug on the volume pot.

[chrissyinbkk]

You are a champion Simon thank you

[Dedman]

they look similar to the GFS "filtertrons" I used in my ES LP. I'm pretty happy with the sound.

[chrissyinbkk]

Now I'm confused again.... this is what the guy who gave me the pick ups said

"The bare and the black are both ground wires. If you were coil tapping one of these would be attached to the ground on the switch, but as you're not tapping them both are soldered to the back of the volume pot. The other two wires are your hot wires. These are twisted together and should be kept that way, and soldered to the switch."

Personally I think our Simon is right,