2 conductor Dimarzio wiring

[Dreamland_Rebel]

i have an old 2 conductor Dimarzio Super Distortion. it has a shield, Black, and White wires. can anyone tell me which one is hot?
Thanks.

[Grandturk]

Sorry - that doesn't sound to me like coil split wiring. It sounds more like you've got two leads so you can select in or out-of phase with a second pickup - i.e. they're both hot leads. Ground one of them with the shielding and use the other as the hot.

In order to split the coils you need to be able to send one coil to ground and only use the hot lead from a single coil. This is usually accomplished by hooking up the "joined" wires - the end of one coil and the start of the second coil - up to a switch to either leave them open or send them both to ground. This effectively grounds one coil (start and finish to ground) and leaves the other coil with one ground and one hot lead.

That, or I don't know shit.

[Grandturk]

Check that. I guess it could be a lead to the connection of the two wires. In that case, just wire it to a switch and have one position end it to ground and one position open.

As for the color, no idea. Try it one way and see how it sounds.

[MakeAJazzNoiseHere]

Don't know, I'd guess white is hot and if that's wrong, then just flip the wires. Are you using it with any other pickups? If you aren't, then it doesn't matter... Pick one. All that will happen if you get it backwards is, it will be out of phase with the other pickup, which can be cool if you want to play 70's porn movie sountrack music.

[Grandturk]

IF one wire is a lead to the connection between the coils, if you wire it up right, you should get series humbucking and single coil. If you wire it up wrong you should have parallel humbucking and nothing/buzz

[DonP]

i have an old 2 conductor Dimarzio Super Distortion. it has a shield, Black, and White wires. can anyone tell me which one is hot?
Thanks.

Do you have a DMM? Measure DC resistance in K, shield to white, then shield to black. Higher reading = hot, 1/2 reading is coil tap.

Or just try it as others have said. It will be apparent which is hot.

[Grandturk]

If it's not the lead to the coil split and is instead the ground, resistance will be the same... Actually I think it will be the same either way.

[Tricky]

Those old 2 wire pups were what made them famous.
Probably not a high gain pup. Sweet sound.

[Grandturk]

Probably not a high gain pup. Sweet sound.

Even though the first Dimarzio was the Super Distortion???

[Tricky]

I was waiting on that.

Compared to what has come since then.
I have some of the old 2 wire pups.
They have weakend over the years. Still sound great though.

[Grandturk]

I was waiting on that.

Compared to what has come since then.
I have some of the old 2 wire pups.
They have weakend over the years. Still sound great though.

Yeah - the Super Distortion is in the lower end of high output - but it still packs a wallop and sounds real good doing it!

[MakeAJazzNoiseHere]

Isn't this just a ground (bare wire) for the plate and the in/out for the two coils in series?

[Grandturk]

Pulled this from The Les Paul Forum today (as usual, slagging off on Dimarzios). Its about the PAF model, but I'm assuming the same colors would have been used on the Super-D's.

Mike Shaw
Les Paul Forum Member


Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 2,376 Re: Ancient DiMarzio PAF's

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Nope, not Supers D's. These have pole slugs and pole pieces and the resistance is in the 8k range. I confirmed with Steve Blucher with DiMarzio that these are the DH103 PAF's. Apparently there is a shielded wire, a bare wire, a black and a white. Every thing is a ground except for the white which is hot.

[Dreamland_Rebel]

awesome thanks GT.

[straycat]

The black is hot and the white is ground IIRC on the old ones.That's the way mine are anyway.
I have 2 that came out of an old Hamer and they have the braided ground and a black inner wire for the hot.
Old 70's super D's are the best all around rock pick up IMO.
I have some that range from 14k - 16 k and a few in the 10-11k range so they are all over the place k wise.
They are my fave pick up hands down.Lots of mid range beefy-ness not at all like a new ones.