need some help with wiring duncan designed and jackson pickup together...

[Nazgul]

I wanted duncan designed hb103b pickup in the neck and jackson j90c in the bridge on my jackson rx10d. So I took my guitar to my neighbour who did all the soldering for me (he's really good at it )... I checked pickup color codes on http://www.guitarelectronics.com and found out that S&D and Jackson use same color designation except that the black and green are reversed on Jackson pickups. Btw both pickups have 5 wires (black, red, green, white and red). So I went and downloaded wiring diagram from seymour&duncan site for 2hums, 3way switch and 1 vol pot (exactly my configuration):




we did everything as shown and checked the wiring a few times...and all it did was buzz/hum badly when I touched any metal part of the guitar. everything was grounded properly, we even resoldered some joints and nothing. Ground from the bridge was good, two wires from under the pickups were grounded in the cavity. Then I left my guitar over the few days at his house and he got it to work...but....only there's very very little distortion now.

He modified the diagram a bit....reversed black and green wires on duncan designed too, left both bare wires on pickups unsoldered, tip on the switch that's on top (in the upper diagram) is now grounded directly on the pot and the left tip on the pot now goes to the centre tip on the switch.
Check the diagram below!

Absolutely no hum, cleans are nice, both pickups work like they should, but there's very little distortion on the high gain channel .
I'm using 250k pot, but that can't be the reason. Also I have a stereo jack, but wired for mono.

What could be wrong?

[Nazgul]

bump!

Here's the way how it's wired now:

[Nazgul]

[mm2002]

I would ground the shield wires, but that won't be causing low output. Do both pickups have low output?

[Nazgul]

I would ground the shield wires, but that won't be causing low output. Do both pickups have low output?

yes. the cleans are ok, they are loud and all, it's just when I turn on distortion it adds almost no gain. My other guitar works with no problem so it's not the amps fault.

[Dreamland_Rebel]

[hippietim]

This is a great site here:

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/cat...kupcolorcodes/

[Nazgul]

Dreamland_Rebel & hippietim: I knew this before, re-read my first post .

[hippietim]

d'oh.

well, i would try wiring each pickup straight to the jack and make sure they are working all on their own. if they're both fine then you may have a bad switch or pot. so then add things back in. wire one pickup through the volume pot. if that works then add the switch. then add the other pickup.

[Nazgul]

d'oh.

well, i would try wiring each pickup straight to the jack and make sure they are working all on their own. if they're both fine then you may have a bad switch or pot. so then add things back in. wire one pickup through the volume pot. if that works then add the switch. then add the other pickup.

good idea! I'll try that tomorrow. the wire that goes from the pickup to the jack is the black one for Duncan and green one for Jackson, right? Anyway I don't think the pot could be the problem, since it works completely normal without any hum.

any other ideas?

[hippietim]

good idea! I'll try that tomorrow. the wire that goes from the pickup to the jack is the black one for Duncan and green one for Jackson, right? Anyway I don't think the pot could be the problem, since it works completely normal without any hum.

any other ideas?

i'd wire ground wire from the bridge and the wires from the pickup straight to the jack. or you could still use the back of the pot or something as a place to solder all the grounds to - shouldn't make much difference for this test. but whatever wire is going to the switch now should go to the tip of the jack

[Nazgul]

that's what I was thinking .