Waz's MMB-4

[Simon Barden]

Hmmm. Not according the PBG wiring diagram. You might have two wires that come connected together like on a series humbucker, but (if you see the wiring diagram), they are supposed to be grounded. Which means they must be wired in series. You simply can't use two volumes on them if they were series wired.

They aren't the same soapbar pickups like with the EX-5 and IB5/6 models, they are very much the thick pole MM type. Soundwise I'm assuming that it will be a similar pickup sound to that on my old OPL MM bass with exactly the same wiring arrangement, which is a big thick punchy sound with both pickup volumes turned up fully.

My suspicion is that being humbucking (the pickup should be with both coils in parallel at the same volume) one pickup is obviously RW/RP with respect to the other and that with your EX-5, the coils were possibly being wired up with one coil reversed, so that you would have got a very thin sound indeed with lots of frequency cancellation. You were aiming for a split coil so weren't purposely choosing the wire connections for a parallel operation (which would probably have sounded fine).

This is where Weirdy would be useful, as he knows all this coil connection stuff well, whereas I have to keep looking it up and working it out. However I've been looking this up and Ralph's wiring diagram is fine for true parallel/humbucker wiring (though the wire colours are the Seymour Duncan ones and IIRC, the kit ones generally use the DiMarzio colours - though I wouldn't bet on it).

[RalphH]

Hmmm. Not according the PBG wiring diagram. You might have two wires that come connected together like on a series humbucker, but (if you see the wiring diagram), they are supposed to be grounded. Which means they must be wired in series. You simply can't use two volumes on them if they were series wired.

They aren't the same soapbar pickups like with the EX-5 and IB5/6 models, they are very much the thick pole MM type. Soundwise I'm assuming that it will be a similar pickup sound to that on my old OPL MM bass with exactly the same wiring arrangement, which is a big thick punchy sound with both pickup volumes turned up fully.

My suspicion is that being humbucking (the pickup should be with both coils in parallel at the same volume) one pickup is obviously RW/RP with respect to the other and that with your EX-5, the coils were possibly being wired up with one coil reversed, so that you would have got a very thin sound indeed with lots of frequency cancellation. You were aiming for a split coil so weren't purposely choosing the wire connections for a parallel operation (which would probably have sounded fine).

This is where Weirdy would be useful, as he knows all this coil connection stuff well, whereas I have to keep looking it up and working it out. However I've been looking this up and Ralph's wiring diagram is fine for true parallel/humbucker wiring (though the wire colours are the Seymour Duncan ones and IIRC, the kit ones generally use the DiMarzio colours - though I wouldn't bet on it).

The attached diagram shows the wiring options for the stock (Chinese) PUP's that come with the MMB's.
Hope this provides more data for everyone.