[simpa]

Hello there. I have decided to swap out both humbuckers on my Fender Jaguar Blacktop. However, I am new to pick-up wiring. I have no problem handling a soldering iron - but I have no clue about the wiring aspect. The setup is two humbuckers, a three-way switch and one volume knob and one tone knob. I have decided to go with a pair of DP103 DiMarzio-pickups.

I understand that this is "standard wiring" and should be fairly simple to do for anyone, but I have zero intuition about this. Any help is greatly appreciated. I do not want to rush into anything before I completly understand the procedure.

So far I have understood this - please correct me if I am wrong:
Each one of the new pickups have four conductors,  two of them are soldered together and one (ground) is soldered to the back of the volume pot. (which seems to be the only action directly involving the pots?). The hot wire is soldered to the selector - basically the same as the earlier arrangement.


This is the current structure:
https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-fxdzp2uudp/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/2416/5091/wd2hh3t11_00__73696.1470694370.jpg?c=2

Where should I start? I will include a couple of pictures. I will supply more if necessary. I have not de-soldered anything yet.

https://ibb.co/Jc9cQPL
https://ibb.co/ftBPhFF
https://ibb.co/F7W2hmW
https://ibb.co/Jc9cQPL

[buddroyce]

The easiest way to do this is to swap each pickup one at a time. I used to draw everything on a piece of paper so I can remember where everything was (and still do with complicated stock wiring).

The black and white wires on the pickups are soldered together and then taped off with some electrical tape. The purpose of these two wires is to join the two coils together. You can do fancier wiring by keeping them separate but joining them and then leaving them alone is the simplest thing to do.

Take note of where your original pickups are soldered to. One side should be soldered to one of the lugs on the pot and the other on the back of one of the pots. Just soldered the green wire to the back of the pot where the old ground wires were. The red wire on the new pickup will go to the lug on the pot that your old pickup was soldered to.

Repeat for the other pickup.

Done.

[simpa]

Thanks for the quick answer!

I am a bit confused, though. The original pickups are not directly soldered to the lugs of the potentiometers. But I see one wire soldered directly to the lug of the three-way switch, for each pickup. However, the three-selector switch has the middle-lug connected to one lug of the volume potentiometer. This could, of course, be equivalent to what you mentioned.

The lay-out seems identical to this:

[HarlowTheFish]

Yeah, that's the one. I'm not 100% on the Dimarzio wire colors but I think it's white and black together, green and bare to ground, and red is hot to the switch.

[darkbluemurder]

Yeah, that's the one. I'm not 100% on the Dimarzio wire colors but I think it's white and black together, green and bare to ground, and red is hot to the switch.

Yes, that is the DiMarzio standard wiring. With Seymour Duncan it would be black to hot, green and bare to ground and red+white together.

Cheers Stephan

[buddroyce]

If the original pickups were wired to the switch, just follow where the wires went originally.

[simpa]

Back home again and time to start soldering. I have just de-soldered both the old pick-ups, taken pictures and marked everything. There is just one detail that I am not sure about: The old pick-ups do only have  two conductors each, one coloured and bare. My new pick-ups have five wires: One goes to the switch (red), two are soldered together (black and white) and two remains: one bare and one green. I assume that the bare and green one can be soldered together?

https://ibb.co/fDhLwK7
This is the old configuration. The bare wires from both pick-ups were soldered together to another wire that leads to the back of the potentiometer (ground). My question is: Can I replicate this configuration, but with the bare and green wires joined together? Or do I have to connect each pick-up separately to the potentiometer?

[HarlowTheFish]

Yup! Green and bare to ground. Your old pickup probably wasn't 4-conductor, so it would just have a bare ground wire.

[simpa]

Just one detail left then. Can I treat the new "green+bare"-wire exactly the same way as the old grounded wire? In other words, have them joined together from both of the pickups into just one wire that leads directly to the potentiometer, instead of creating one connection per pick-up? I suspect this is the same, but it just feels odd to solder together four different wires (green+bare) for each pick-up).   

[HarlowTheFish]

Yeah it's fine for less conductors, but it becomes an issue with more wires because if the contacts start touching the inside shielding paint or foil it can cause shorts to ground that will get you no sound. Ideally you'd solder each pickup directly to the back of pots to avoid this, but the existing solution should work - just make sure you put heat-shrink tubing or something around the joint securely so you don't get problems.

[simpa]

Okay. Soldering done. Both good news and bad news - but mostly good.

I have good sound from both pick-ups (tried with a string). However, there is a great deal of humming when I touch the pick-up selector, so I suspect some sort of grounding issue. Can I troubleshoot this effectively?

[HarlowTheFish]

Could be the pickup selector ground, or some sort of shielding issue, among other things, but those are the most common I've seen. You might also have a noisy switch - some of the lower-end toggles are like that sometimes. If it's the selector ground, it's a pretty easy fix (just resolder it and it should be fine). If it's a shielding issue, it's a little more time-consuming (getting shielding tape, putting it in properly, and re-grounding) but not hard. If it's the toggle, it should probably be replaced.