ilovefuzz.com

I acquired a Pawn Shop Supersonic some time ago which needed to be re-wired. The purchase was mostly inspired by the colour (an unusual purple described as 'gun metal grey') and I hadn't given it much attention until the lockdown started in the UK.

So far I've replaced the pickup selection switch and the jack. I've also connected up a volume pot with the stock neck pickup, which seems to be fully functional. However, I've encountered some problems with the bridge pickup (pictured). I've not been able to find a schematic for the pickups, unfortunately, how can I tell which wire is 'hot' and which is 'ground'? The pickup also does not have any screws and I'm not sure which type I need. It's a Mexican made Atomic humbucker, I think, and the screws for the neck pickup are pretty narrow. Do I need metric or imperial screws?

The main thing for Hot and Ground are that you wire everything consistently. So basically just pick black = hot and white = ground, or vice versa, and carry that logic all the way through your wiring. And then connect the red and green together if you don't want to do coil splitting. If you do want to do coil splitting, the black and white becomes a bit more important as I believe the four wires can only be paired in one way to give the proper coil splits. (Might need a meter to figure that out though.)

Any other wiring gurus have useful input here?

kosta wrote:The main thing for Hot and Ground are that you wire everything consistently. So basically just pick black = hot and white = ground, or vice versa, and carry that logic all the way through your wiring. And then connect the red and green together if you don't want to do coil splitting. If you do want to do coil splitting, the black and white becomes a bit more important as I believe the four wires can only be paired in one way to give the proper coil splits. (Might need a meter to figure that out though.)

Any other wiring gurus have useful input here?

Thanks for the info. I've soldered everything together now and it seems to be out of phase. I actually don't mind how it sounds so I'll probably leave it for the time being.

After reading your post I realised that the stock pickups each have a different pair of wires taped up. Is it possible that they were intended to be out of phase?

So like the neck has red + green taped together while the bridge has red + white taped together or something like that?

Also - which positions on the three-way toggle sound out of phase to you? Neck? Neck + Bridge? Bridge? If it's only the middle position with both pickups on that sounds out of phase, just reverse the way the wires for one of the pickups connects to the toggle switch. Snip or de-solder the leads (at the switch) and re-solder them to opposite lugs on the switch. This reverses the hot and ground for that pickup and eliminates phase cancellation with the other pickup.

If it's an individual pickup that sound out of phase without the other pickup being active, then you'll have to try different combos of taping the leads for that individual pickup together. In that case, having a meter to check the 4 leads will be pretty essential.

kosta wrote:So like the neck has red + green taped together while the bridge has red + white taped together or something like that?

Yeah, is that normal?

kosta wrote:
Also - which positions on the three-way toggle sound out of phase to you? Neck? Neck + Bridge? Bridge? If it's only the middle position with both pickups on that sounds out of phase, just reverse the way the wires for one of the pickups connects to the toggle switch. Snip or de-solder the leads (at the switch) and re-solder them to opposite lugs on the switch. This reverses the hot and ground for that pickup and eliminates phase cancellation with the other pickup.

It's only when the neck and bridge are combined, I think. I had no idea that it mattered which lug of the switch was used for each pickup! I wired it so that the up position activated the neck and the down position turned on the bridge pickup. However, I think it's normal for a Supersonic's switch to work in the opposite way.

Thanks again for your advice!

penelope tree wrote:

kosta wrote:So like the neck has red + green taped together while the bridge has red + white taped together or something like that?

Yeah, is that normal?

Sounds it's deliberately out of phase? Pickups made by the same manufacturer are going to have the same wire colours. So if you just wire them up both the same they should be in phase