Fender Humbucker has three wires....huh?

[Bubee]

I'm trying to wire up a strat with a Fender Humbucker. The humbucker has three wires: black, blue, and green. With a VOM, I measured the leads. The black wire is definitely ground. (zero ohms when linked to humbucker case ground). the blue wire reads 9K ohms to ground, the green wire reads 4.5K ohms to ground, and measuring across the blue and green reads 4.5K ohms. I'm trying to wire it to allow me to split the humbucker, but I don't know how. I am using a spst mini switch, but I am used to humbuckers having four wires: a start and finish for each of the two coils. Usually two of the coil wires are spliced together and then connected to the grounding switch to split. With only three wires, does the blue (9k) wire go to the main pickup selector switch, and the green wire to the spst grounding switch? I assume the black wire goes to the back of a pot.

[badpenguin]

So you are going for a coil tap. Black to ground, Blue to pot input, green to spst. Use the center lug on the switch, the ground should go to either corner leg. Have fun!

 

 

[Bubee]

Quote

it worked that way! thanks

 

 

[gardo]

My HSS  strat uses a coil tap when the switch in the mid /bridge position to balance the pickups. I jumped from that for a tap in bridge pos

[WRGKMC]

9K is both coils running in series like most normal two wire Humbuckers.  The extra wire lets you short out one could and run a single coil for a more Fenderish sound. 

 

The advantage of having 4 wires lets you run the coils Series/Parallel/Split.  I'm not a huge fan of split tones myself.  I find most pickups take a huge dip in volume when the coil is split except when using certain pickup types.  I much more prefer a series parallel wiring config. You can get some excellent changes in tone vs gain using those over simply splitting the pickup.