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Need help wiring a generic bass humbucker


danielkn

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Hi everyone!

I dont know too much about electronics, but I need to get this "Rocker" brand bass working.

It's just a passive 1 humbucker, 1 Tone, 1 Volume bass. The wires coming out of the humbucker are yellow, blue, white, black, and bare.

I googled some diagrams, but this thing's got funny colors for wires, so I got no idea what to do.

Help please? wave.gif

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You're going to need a way to measure resistance (ohms) so you can can sort out the wiring. A digital multimeter is $20 or less at your local electronics, discount or auto parts store. The bare wire is always the ground/shield line. The other four wires are the coils, two wires for each coil in the pickup. If you have the test probe on one of the colored wires, only one of the other colored wires will show a reading - that's the other line to that coil. The other coil should have almost exactly the same resistance reading. I think most bass humbuckers are wired with the coils in parallel, but not always. (Guitar humbuckers are usually wired in series). Then of course the coils must be wired in phase or else the signal will be extremely weak and tinny.

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Thanks,

I used the multimeter and have discovered that the black and white are together, and the blue and yellow are together. I'm just not sure which is the hot and which is the ground, of the pair (if that's how this works)

I've followed this diagram,

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support...sicman_passive

With the blue and yellow going to the ground and the black and white going to the left lug of the volume. This works out fine wired just the pickup to the volume pot to the output, but when I also wire in the tone knob, I get NO output at all. I'm a little confused now.

EDIT: I connected the yellow/blue wires going to the volume pot, and the black, white and bare going to the ground. I get an output now, but the volume and tone knobs do little to nothing. Hmmm

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I can't think of any way to figure out which is hot and which is ground, but it shouldn't matter much on a humbucker.

Volume and tone should work. Make sure your grounds are solid. I think I'd prefer 500K pots, but maybe that isn't as important on a bass.

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Quote Originally Posted by Greyhame

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There is no "hot" and "ground" just one side of the coil and the other side.

 

Some hold that the outer windings provide a shield of sorts to the inner windings. To the extent that is true, the lead connected to the outer windings should be connected to ground, and the inner windings to hot. Dunno how much difference that might make, if any.
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Okay, I'm gonna take everything off and rewire it from start, just in case I missed something.

I've read that there's a chance the cap has been fried too? I'm gonna go find a replacement and try that.

Also, there seems to be some inconsistencies between seymour duncan's diagrams and some other diagrams ive looked at regarding how the tone and volume pots are connected.

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support...sicman_passive

http://www.riograndepickups.com/imag...mall_PBass.pdf

Which should I follow?

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