Members Mercenary Posted December 1, 2011 Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 i got new pickups for my strat. a neck SD hotrail and a GFS humbucker in the bridge. it was originally SSS set up and is now HSS. When i play the bridge it is just fine, however when i switch to the neck or middle pick up while playing with high gain, the volume goes very low and there is not much gain coming out of those pickups. When i switch back to bridge it is just fine. What did I do wrong? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Belva Posted December 1, 2011 Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 You have the pups out of phase. Yes the GFS instructions say you can use SD colors, but that's only if you have all GFS pups. Swap the ground and the + on the GFS pup. Problem will be solved. How do I know this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mercenary Posted December 1, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 so the GFS pup is ruining everything? lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alan Roberts Posted December 1, 2011 Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 You have the pups out of phase. Yes the GFS instructions say you can use SD colors, but that's only if you have all GFS pups. Swap the ground and the + on the GFS pup. Problem will be solved. How do I know this? There may be more to it than that if he's also having problems in the neck position. Maybe both new PuPs are out of phase with the middle? Or just the new neck PuP if it's only on combinations of the neck and middle. Hey OP - is it when the PuPs are in the notch positions or even when you use the neck or middle individually? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mercenary Posted December 1, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 Every position except the bridge position is low volume Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mercenary Posted December 1, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 the GFS instructions spoke about what customtele said about if u have a fender pickup you have to wire it differently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alan Roberts Posted December 1, 2011 Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 The bridge PuP shouldn't have any effect on the neck and neck/middle combination, though. Duncan PuPs can have the same problem matching up with Fender PuPs. But even that wouldn't explain low volume when using only 1 PuP at a time. The perceived volume of the 'buckers will seem louder than the single coil, though. Especially with distortion.Post a pic? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mercenary Posted December 1, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 This is what came with my humbucker. However due to the other wires being black I used the black wire as the wire that connects to the selector and the green is "grounded" because thats what the other pickups looked like when i opened up the pickguard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alan Roberts Posted December 1, 2011 Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 Can you post a pic of the wiring in your guitar? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Johnny Two Tone Posted December 1, 2011 Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 While it is most likely the fact that every friggin' pup manufacturer chooses to use a different wiring scheme with the same color wires, I have had extreme volume reduction problems brought on my a lose input jack; the jack being loose allows for the terminals and soldered wire to potentially come lose. Assuming all of the solder point are solid, nothing is being grounded out, and the wiring is all correct than I'd say just take one pickup out at a time to see if any one specific part is creating the issue. Eliminate one item at a time. But, of course, before that just do what customtele said and see if that works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted December 1, 2011 Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 From his description, it sounds like its wired properly. I'd only suspect a wiring problem if the signal dropped more than 50%. The bridge pickup he installed is high impedance, high gain and the singles are low impedance, low gain output. I've seen this happen dozens of times. You have to have pickup impedances close to have a balanced output. GFS seems to overwind most of their pickups so its a good guess he choose the wrong humbucker to match the others. Measure the resistance of each pickup with an ohm meter connected to the tip and ring of the guitar cord. Keep the volume and tones cranked up ans select each ppup. My guess is the bridge pickup has double the resistance over the others. That would account for the volume dropoff. You can try a 500K volume pot to see if it helps, but I would guess you just chose the wrong bridge pickup tomatch with the others. You want a humbucker with around 5~6K ohms to match with single coils that are lower.Anything hot wound over 8K will be doubble the singles and cause an imbalance that cant be corrected with pickup height. The hot rail neck pup is designed to match other singles in signal output strength. It may have higher impedance but they compensate signal strength by reducing the magnet strength. It may drive or distort the signal morebut its output strength isnt too much stronger than the singles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members r0bo01 Posted December 1, 2011 Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 fwiw - my ibz has similar p'up config: sd hot rails neck, duckbucker mid, and dimebucker bridge. the neck and bridge pups swamp the middle one (db is a lo gain pup), but by themselves have "normal" volume. assuming your middle pup is stock, recheck your neck pup ohms & wiring? also, a whisker of copper can be hard to see but do the nasty to your output. good luck with it! edit: just remembered, the ibby doesn't have a tone control, so my 2 cents is only worth a penny. however, maybe a new can of worms is opened, especially if op's tone controls are stock (neck & mid). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mercenary Posted December 1, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 the volume drops heavily on these 2 pickups though so i do not think it is a problem with output. these pickups should be giving me some pretty decent output whenever I had my gain up prior to installing the new pickups. its like switching from lead to clean setting when switching between pickups Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Belva Posted December 1, 2011 Members Share Posted December 1, 2011 It could be anything. Have you tried wiggling stuff to see if some volume happens? I've seen switches ground against the body and drive me fooking bonkers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted December 2, 2011 Members Share Posted December 2, 2011 Post a pick of the wiring. My giess is still unequal pickup outputs. An ohm meter would tell the whole story in seconds. Without ityou have to rely on your wiring and soldering skills. With a pic we can verify the parts were wired properly. If there was a short, you would have no sound, if you had an open connection, you would have no sound or a hum. Since you have sound, just not enough strength, theres a few narrow possibilities. With the neck pickup, its possible the low output could be the result of only one coil operating or the coils wired in parallel instead of series. Phase reversal would be very apparent because it would sound ultra thin and untra weal. None of this would affect the the center single coil pup. One fix to balannce the pickups output is to put the bridge on its own volume control. That way youcan blend its output with the others. The other is to get higher output singles. Last HSS I builtI had to swap several HB's and singles from my pup collection till I got a balanced set that would work. I wound up with an Ibanez Bridge Humbucker, a fat Dimarzio middle and a Mighty Mite in the neck. I used three separate switches on that one and the neck has just the right amount of drive for leads. The other two are cleaner. Singles are cleaner, but the output strength is strong enough to compete with the HB. I can use the singles in any combination with the Bridge or just run them solo. The other item is dialing in the sound so they all sound good. I dial up the neck so it sounds the way I like itand the center and bridge step the guitar up in gain from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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