Zebra Humbucker orientation

[jimneil]

Hi
I am about to fit my Zebra humbucker pickups and there are no apparent indications as to which is the neck and which is the bridge pickup. The resistance is the same on both 12.5k ohms. The only difference is one has an outer wire insulation of black and the other is red. In the wireing diagrams they are shown as one yellow and the other red.
Also which way are they situated being zebra pickups yellow one side and black the other, there are no screw adjustments only pole faces.
I would appreciate any assistance.
Thanks Jim

[TZK321]

Not sure if this will help but here's a photo of my Gibson SG with a zebra bridge pickup.

[Simon Barden]

If there is no difference in DC resistance between the two pickups (a bit strange, so you might want to have the neck pickup sitting a fair bit lower than the neck pickup to match outputs), then it's really down to you as to how you like them arranged. Maybe as the photo in your build diary? Whichever way round you fit them, it won't make a difference to the sound or the output polarity of the signals.

I'd drop an email to Adam asking about the pickups having the same DCR value, as one really should have less windings than the other. Some of the kit pickups have N and B inked on the back (for neck and bridge), or possibly in a more Gibson fashion, T and R (for treble and rhythm), so it's worth checking (just in case one pickup has a less powerful magnet fitted compared to the other, even if they do have the same coil windings). But it is more likely that they are the same, and just have different output cable insulation colours.

[jimneil]

Thanks for the help I did contact Adam and he said the neck pickup will have a longer lead and after checking the pole spaces there was the answer one was 50mm and the other 52mm. Still not sure why the resistance was the same.
Jim

[Simon Barden]

I'm not either. The neck should be the 50mm pole spacing, which means that the internally the coil bobbins should be 2mm shorter than the bridge pickup bobbins. Using the same gauge wire, the same number of winding turns on each pickup mean a shorter overall wire length (4mm reduction per complete turn adds up to a lot with 6500-7000 turns per coil) and so reduced resistance for the neck pickup. So either the neck has more turns on it, which means either a) a higher output for the neck pickup, or else b) it's got less turns on it but uses a smaller wire diameter with a a higher resistance per unit length to get the same overall DCR, e.g. 43AWG (neck) instead of 42AWG (bridge).

You won't really know until you put everything together and see how they balance. At least it's not too expensive these days to get replacement pickups if they are quite mismatched - and if you like the sound of one of them, then you may only need to replace the other one if they are really unbalanced in output and you can't live with that.

[TZK321]

Couldn't you balance the output by changing the distance between the pickups and the strings?

[Sonic Mountain]

Yep - Simon mentioned that above.

[Simon Barden]

You can indeed, but it only gives you so much to play with, and it also affects the tone. You may get the neck volume to drop to match the bridge output, but then have a very uninteresting sound from it compared to when the pickup was a lot nearer the strings. Or it may be fine. You just don't know until you try it.

One further option if the pickups are 4-wire ones, is to wire the neck in parallel, rather than series. This will give a lower output and a less thick sound. But again, try the standard configuration first. If you are always going to play with a lot of distortion, you really won't notice any volume difference between the two pickups. It's only when playing clean that you'll really notice the difference.

But with both pickups measuring around a 12.5k DCR, they aren't going to do 'clean' that well without turning the guitar volume down. The high output will probably start to drive the front end of even the cleanest clean amp. Fitting a treble bleed circuit might be a good idea if you do want to get some clean sounds from the guitar.