Model 4/Seymour wiring help requested

[majobis]

Hi All! I just picked up an '86' model 4 <font color="red"> (on/off toggle switch for each pickup)</font> and not caring for the Jackson neck & mid pickups, I decided to swap them out for Seymour live wires.

<u>Here is my question:</u> The Jackson pickups I removed had one main wire and a ground. The Seymours have a ground, a white (hot) and a red (battery power). From the factory, the Jacksons were already hooked up to the circuit board, so the battery power was taken care of. Since Seymour hasn't gotten back to me in three days [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img], I'll ask you: <font color="red">Will I need to attach each red wire to the circuitboard main power myself, or is there a way to bypass this? </font> Thanks in advance for your help.

[MountainDog]

Re: Model 4/Seymour wiring help requested

I suggest bypassing/removing the Jackson electronics and installing the Live Wires with some new pots like the Duncan wiring diagram CLICK HERE! I say this as the jackson pickups are passive, and then run thru the electronics to become active/low impedance. To try to wire in the Live Wires (which are very powerfully active) in place of the jackson pickups on the the Jackson electronics circuit board would probably result in an overload and not sound very good.

Here's a generic wiring diagram for hooking up the individual switches: CLICK HERE!

By the way, you can keep the Jackson input jack and battery wire hookups and re-use with the live wires.

[majobis]

Re: Model 4/Seymour wiring help requested

Would an alternative be to keep the pickups hooked up to the switches, but to use a second battery dedicated to just the two seymours?

[MountainDog]

Re: Model 4/Seymour wiring help requested

If you are trying to say: "I want to keep the Jackson electronics and its board and such in place and just put the Live Wires white wire to where the Jackson pickups 'main' wire went and put the Live Wires ground wire where the Jackson pickups ground wire was, and then do a separate battery to power the red wire of the Live Wires" (assuming you keep the existing Jackson battery hook up intact), well you could do that, but I don't know what it will sound like.

Again the Jackson pickups are passive (meaning they are NOT powered). What is powered by the battery is the electronic circuit board. The stock Jackson arrangement takes a passive non-powered pickup, feeds it into an electronic circuit board that 'converts' the signal into a low-impedance active circuit. A passive humbucker usually puts out about 200mV AC current.

An active powered pickup, such as the Live Wires, or the EMGs usually put out between 500mV to 1000mV AC of current, easily double or triple that of a passive.

By substituting the Live Wires into the existing wiring of the Jackson circuit board, you will 'slam' the circuit with a much hotter signal than was intended. In electronic circuitry (radios/TVs/receivers/amplifiers,etc), doing this usually yields in ugly overloading/distortion of the signal.

So try it, and see what it sounds like. If you like the sound then you can leave it alone. If you find you get uncontrollable feedback all the time, then you'll know it isn't working too well.