[Vinnie1971]

Hi
I have an El Maya EM1300, which I bought as a brand new 10 year oldish guitar in1988 (it was sat in a store for 10 years before I bought it! )

It has high gain pickups that sound great driven but don't clean up so well. Very harsh, but better since I lowered the the 12 hex poles in each pickup.

I was talking about this guitar with an old school luthier who informs me that even though the headstock says made in Kobe Japan, part of the production (wood work?) was carried out in Sweden! It's one seriously over engineered guitar. She also told me that those harsh pickups are vintage Di Marzio Superdistortions fitted in the factory.

I replaced the tone pots as they were crackly and noticed a weird wiring set up. They seem to have one conductor wire going to the input of the volume pot and the braid is grounded (soldered directly) to the back of the volume pot.

Is that normal? I can see different coloured wires under the tape on the pickup but nothing exposed. Is it possible to coil split  these? I am loath to peel back tape to find I can't - was hoping someone might know.

Many thanks


Vinnie

[darkbluemurder]

Hi,

Can you post a picture? That would make it easier to check.

Most single conductor pickups are wired this way: inner conductor to volume pot and the braided shield to ground. This works because the other end of the winding is soldered to ground at the pickup. With a four conductor wire pickup, none of the colored wires is connected to ground at the pickup - you have to make the ground connection in the control cavity (i.e. back of a control). With the DiMarzio color code that would be the green wire (red = hot).

Cheers Stephan

[Vinnie1971]

I guess I need to take a pickup out to see conclusively. In the control cavity the lead from the pickups is a single hot conductor wire in the centre of the lead and the braided shielding is the ground and soldered to the pot. There seem to be no other conductor wires but I can see jumper wires under the tape of the pickups.

[darkbluemurder]

There seem to be no other conductor wires but I can see jumper wires under the tape of the pickups.

No need to take them out for this reason. The jumper wires under the tape come out of the coils and are linked together to get the coil in series. One wire is probably connected to the pickup's base plate (=ground) and the other wire is connected to the inner wire.

This sounds pretty normal to me.

Cheers Stephan

[Vinnie1971]

In that case, I will leave it alone. I once split 2 conductor humbuckers, one was fine , the other , well I think the heat of adding a fly lead to the jumper between the coils was enough to warm the wire to separate from the coil so it was turned into a single coil. Oops.

[Vinnie1971]

Well, I popped them out and had a look as I don't really like these pickups and I now  trying different magnets. They are a one trick pony, I loved them as a youth when I played with a lot of effects, but I prefer clean or low gain, which these don't do so well.
Experimenting with Alnico 2 and Alnico 5 -as these are shrill ice pick in your ear, even Alnico 2 still sounds pretty bright.
But I notice a lot of wire in between, I see a red and black wire soldered together between the coils and looks like a good length to just add a coil split wire.

I always wondered why these are brown, they are OEM superdistortions specially mounted in a brown bobbin to match the colour scheme of the EL Maya guitar - but unlike others they do have the 2 rows of fat adjustable Hex bolts (someone told me that on other 1970s Japanese guitars with OEM diMarzios just had non non-adjustable slugs, but I don't know, I have never seen them)

I might do some recording as I think they sound great with Alnico 2 and Alnico 5. I think I just created early 1970s Norton and Air Classic (ok the air uses winds to replicate A2, but A2 sounds great)

So Larry, please offer Alnico 2 - it sounds great!

Here's the El Maya - I reckon straight through maple neck, brass nut and saddles with string through back fixed bridge make for mega resonance, sustain and brightness that make those superdistortions sound a bit OTT for my tastes.





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[Vinnie1971]

My mistake - after some strange DCR readings and before and after checks, replaced the battery in my multi-meter and these are not Superdistortions but the DiMarzio neck partner, super 2 - must be very early. They look exactly like super distortions but they read 7.9k. I would have though super distortion fir the bridge, but no, they are both early super 2s same single core and braid is ground as super D, same brass bass plate and 12 adjustable Hex poles. I guess that explains why with that huge ceramic magnet why these were so harsh and ice pick shrill - more so than any strat bridge pickup.
Much nicer with A2.


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