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Hey everyone! My son and I are building our first instrument together, an EX-5 bass. It's my sons but neither one of us has ever traveled this road before so at the encouragement of Adam from Pit Bull, here we are. My main concern is the wiring. I have a diagram but the color coding does not match what we have. I'll do some more reading on the forum to see if I missed a post with the same issue and I'll post a few pictures. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.
Hi Fellowsoldier and your son, welcome to the forum, good to see another father/son build. Great kit to start on.
With the pickup wires looks like they are coil splittable, which means you can run one coil (single coil pickup sound) or both coils (humbucker sound) with a push pull pot, but if you want to wire it up as per the PBG diagram I would tape up the bare end of the red/yellow wires which are joined and the green/bare wire will be earth and the single black wire will be the hot wire. Don't worry if the wire colours are different just follow the diagram.
Usually the pickup with the longer wires will be the neck pickup, shorter wires is the bridge pickup.
Start sanding and please post lots of progress pics !
Best of luck. Ask as many questions as you like there is plenty help and knowledge on the forum.
If you have a multimeter (not very expensive start from about $15) you can check the resistance of the pickup wires will tell you alot. Ask if you need to know more.
Welcome to the forum guys. Hope you enjoy your build as much as my son and I enjoyed ours. Start a build diary and keep us up to date on progress! Wokka is spot on (as usual) with the wiring advice.
cheers,
Gav.
Thank you Wokkaboy and gavinturner. It's been pretty cool so far. I'll post photos as we go along.
Welcome Fellowsoldier, it's a great father/son project. The wire colours etc from the factory can vary between kits and batches, so the diagram layout is the important thing rather than specific colours.
The pickups for that kit are now 4-wire whereas originally that style were 2-wire. As Wokks said, from your photo, the black is your hot (+), green and bare is your ground/shield (-) and the joined red & white is the series link. The series link allows you to coil split the pickup if you want (with a switch or push/pull pot), but if not just tape/insulate the bare ends so it can't short with anything.
The wiring isn't anything to stress about and is one of the last things in the build process, so the forum can help walk you through it when you get to that point. Good luck with the build.
Welcome Fellowsoldier
Cap+Beatles+Explorer makes me think Cheap Trick!
Have fun with the build.
Welcome Fellowsoldier, I look forward to seeing your build diary
Hi and welcome. A build diary, taking photos as you go and asking questions about anything you are unsure about is the way to go.