Advice on changing pickups myself...

[AD Chaos]

Hey everyone

I'd like to know if there are any sites with good (complete) info on how to change pickups, especially if there are any 'never do this' kind of rules or advice, I'd like to not fuck up brand new pickups or fry something if I decide to change them myself.

I'm pretty sure it's not complicated for someone who's already done it, but I'm a total n00b when it comes to guitar electronics, plus taking guitars to 'reputable' techs, they've always ended up drilling extra holes in the wood no one asked them to, driving screws to the other side of the guitar, setting the guitars all wrong, etc (I've had FAR too many negative experiences with 'luthiers') and on top of it, I'm paying them..

To elaborate, I ordered a couple of SD pickups for bridge position, an Invader to replace a stock pup, and a Distortion to change the one on my main gtr.
That last one could be trickier to change I think, since some years ago I had a tech guy swap the stock passive for an active (a Blackouts2, with way too much output for clean DIs I'm afraid), all while leaving the stock (passive) neck pup, so now I want to 'revert' that, and have both pickups passive again (but I don't know exactly if the guy did something else besides changing pots and rewiring, the schematic for it wasn't that easy to find).

Are there any comprehensive sites/YT channels or anything else on the subject, or do you have general advice?


Thanks much for your opinions!

 

[viralz]

Usually the schematics that comes with the pickups are really well drawn and easy to figure out. If you're just swapping passives for passives you don't have to do much. Just get a soldering iron and follow the plans, trust yourself its not rocket science.

You'll find it really fun to work on your own instruments too!

 

[amarshism]

its super super easy

make sure to photograph your cavity incase you forget some things, you can pretty much gut the active out of there and just detach the battery compartment. If youre worried make sure you leave yourself with enough lead on the pup incase you need to cut and clean and start again

 

[neptunian]

Some common sense measures that I follow:

- most of the time you can just loosen the strings and bend them to the sides instead of taking them off completely.
- let the iron heat up for a good 10 mins
- to solder, pre-tin your wires/connections (melt a thin layer of solder on them, separately), then hold them in place somehow, heat up, melt solder into them, let cool to solidity.
- the ground wire solder connection to the back of the pots takes way more heat to melt -- if your iron isn't hot enough, it might slowly warm the whole pot up to damaging temps before the solder melts. The hotter it is, the faster it'll do the job before the rest of the pot can get damaged. Sometimes I've clipped the old wire and soldered the new onto that instead of the main solder spot. Other times I've used a propane torch to heat the tip up way beyond the rating of the iron.
- use a towel to protect the guitar body when the pickup still dangles there
- really watch the soldering iron so you don't bump the hot tip into the guitar paint
- when sticking the pickup cable through hole into the electronic cavity, use masking tape to temporarily tape the end wires together into a point to make that easier.
- photograph or draw out what color wire goes to what terminal, keeping in mind the color of the wires might be different if the new pickup is from a different manufacturer.
- note the thickness angle of the pickup rings so that they're not backwards when you reinstall
- shrink wrap tubing and little zip ties are useful.

 

[neptunian]

Since you're going from active -> passive on your main guitar, you'll need at least one new 500k potentiometer to replace the 25k one that the Blackout uses. Unless your tech totally ignored that and left the 500k in there.

Whatever the case, in the end it should look like the typical 2 humbucker diagrams here: http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/

2 humbucker, 1 volume, 1 tone, 3 way:
http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/schematics.php?schematic=2h_1v_1t_3w

with push/pull for coil split:
http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/schematics.php?schematic=2h_1v_1t_3w_1pp

Blackout wiring:
http://www.seymourduncan.com/images/products/electric/humbuckers/501020-110.pdf

 

[AD Chaos]

Usually the schematics that comes with the pickups are really well drawn and easy to figure out. If you're just swapping passives for passives you don't have to do much. Just get a soldering iron and follow the plans, trust yourself its not rocket science.

You'll find it really fun to work on your own instruments too!

Yeah, I'm really eager to start working on the electronics of my instruments, I feel like such a douche every time I drag a guitar to a tech, always to discover they've fucked up something along the way. Makes me even weary of whether they're actually getting the split coils, or things like that right.

make sure to photograph your cavity incase you forget some things, you can pretty much gut the active out of there and just detach the battery compartment. If youre worried make sure you leave yourself with enough lead on the pup incase you need to cut and clean and start again

The tech guy who made that mod (passive neck-active bridge) back in the day started talking to me about ohm differences, how I could screw up some circuit/wiring, etc. Dunno if he did that only in the hopes that I'd keep going to him - not that I would, he drilled 4 extra holes on the guitar for the 'new' mounting ring, and forced the last screw in, instead of arsing himself to swap the damn thing

 

[AD Chaos]

Thank you neptunian, very helpful tips, some I hadn't in mind

What if I want to get rid of the tone pot? (2 humbucker, 1 volume, 1 tone, 3 way)

*edit: I'm guessing it's this one?

 

[neptunian]

That's the one. So you'll probably just leave the tone pot there and bypass it in the circuit. (I did that to one of my guitars actually. Though later I replaced it with a switch that engaged a 300pF capacitor between the hot and ground of the output jack. This was to simulate increased guitar cable length/capacitance when needed. Nice thing about doing it yourself is you can do mods whenever you get bored with the current config).

 

[AD Chaos]

Yeah for a long time I've wanted to get rid of the tone pot and move the volume there, so I can leave just the volume knob where the tone is, so I don't hit it every time I chug.