Pickup Wiring Help

[Boy_Narf]

Hello Everyone,

After waiting MONTHS, I finally received a Bareknuckle Pig 90. I initially ordered the single braided conductor, but the fellow said I should get the 2 conductor + the screen just in case I ever want to run it in a different config. Okay that's fine.

So I have a single P90 (2con + screen), a single CTS volume pot, and a jack. That's it.

I copied the wiring from my old setup which was a single humbucker, single volume, and jack and everything seems good. I then got to the pickup. Old had red and white. Red was ground, white went to the hoop/lug on the pot. Now I have white, black, and bare (bare and black are twisted together). I'm not 100% where these wires should go. Should one of them be capped off and un-used? I'm assuming since bare and black are twisted I should ignore the stand alone white wire, and put bare to ground and black to the lug?

Thanks!

[murkofaeons]

Usually you can find a wiring diagram from the pickup manufacturer. It sounds like the two twisted together are both ground and your other one is hot. I've installed lots of 4-conductor dimarzios and 2 wires go to ground. Definitely try to check the manufacturer diagram first if possible. I'm unfamiliar with bareknuckle tho

[Boy_Narf]

They don't seem to have one. They either have the 4 conductor, or the single conductor and sleeve. I'll look through them again.

Edit: I just found a forum post saying that screen and either go to the ground. Gave that a try, and the volume hits 0 around 3 on the dial, and then kicks back in but sounds rolled off. And this is why I try to avoid soldering heh.

[Jondog]

Most likely, bare and black are ground and white should go to the volume pot. Just try it. Can't hurt anything.

[Boy_Narf]

Okay tried it with the black and sleeve together on the ground. I thought it was working until I turned the volume down.

Went back and flowed some more solder on the bent back lug and the tone seems better! Issue is that it still kicks into full when on 0. Any ideas? Bad ground perhaps?

[Jondog]

Could be a bad pot, maybe a cold solder joint.

[PBA]

On a single coil pickup, the two plastic coated wires are connected to the two ends of the coil. When you only have one pickup, it normally doesn't matter which wire is hot and which is ground. It would matter with more than one pickup though. The sleeve is there to provide some shielding and to connect the metal parts of the pickup itself to ground, so that does need to go to ground. If Bareknuckle have twisted one of the wires together with the shield, then that wire is the one to also connect to ground. In your case, it is the black wire and the white is then hot. White for hot is quite conventional so all should be good.

Unusual volume taper suggests you either have a damaged potentiometer or an inappropriate one. P90s would have originally been paired with 300k linear taper pots. If you have an audio taper pot, it might be worth trying to re-wire using the middle tab as before but switching the ground and input tabs. Audio taper pots are marked with A and linear are marked with B - unless you have a very old pot! Both 500k and 250k should also work, but the tone would be different. The Pig 90 is a high power pickup so it might work better with 500k, but I have no experience of it.

If you have the right kind of pot, then it may well have been damaged. I'm sure that component testing is non-existent so it might have been damaged before you bought it. However, they are sensitive to heat and I've damaged several forming the big glob of solder on the case for the ground connections
There's no easy way of doing it but extra flux, judicious use of a file and a high power - fully hot soldering iron all seem to help.

[Boy_Narf]

I've had three people say the pot is fried. So much for saving money. To the tech!

[Boy_Narf]

Apparently I fried the pot. I was SOO careful not to apply heat for too long. First time I've had that happen. Anyhow, I saved 50% of the cost at my tech by installing the pickup myself, so it was pretty cheap just to get a new pot and have it soldered up properly. I'll report back this afternoon after I pick it up.