Help me Fat my Strat!

September 9, 2007 8:08 PM

Mefi guitar tech-heads: Help me figure out how to wire this humbucker into the bridge position of my strat. Humbucker, two wires, Strat single coil, three wires. Buh?

As a lazy sunday project, I decided to stick this Seymour Duncan 57 humbucker I've had laying about into the bridge position of my trusty lefty mexican Strat. I've got the thing apart, the hole cut in the pickguard, and am essentially ready to rock, except, having removed the bridge single coil pickup, and clipped the wire, I find a red wire, a black wire, and a silver braided wire, what I assume to be ground... My SD humbucker however, simply has a black wire, and braided ground around it. How I do dis?

posted by stenseng to media & arts (4 comments total)

Is the black wire actually three separate wires under a single sleeve? If so, this wiring diagram will probably sort you out (or one of the many diagrams on the SD site likely will).
posted by holgate at 8:29 PM on September 9, 2007

The duncan humbucker is just a single (white actually) wire with a steel braided ground. What I'm unsure of is - the strat has a black wire, a red wire, and a silver wire, all of which went to the single coil pickup I removed. how do I attach those to the two on the SD 'bucker? Is silver ground? Is black ground, and the red and silver go to the white wire on the duncan?
posted by stenseng at 8:33 PM on September 9, 2007

The three wires on the strat pickup sound a bit odd. A single coil only needs two.

I'm assuming your humbucker doesn't have wires for separate coils as holgate noted. If so you can wire it up just like a single coil pickup.

See the first diagram here. The braided wire goes to ground, likely soldered to the back of a pot. The black wire goes to the switch where one of the wires from the single coil should have gone.
posted by 6550 at 8:35 PM on September 9, 2007

Well, I sorted it out. Apparently red is hot, and black and silver (unshielded) are both grounds. Weird!

Anyway, my Strat is now 100% more fat, and I'm a very happy camper!


Mmmm....crunchy....
posted by stenseng at 9:41 PM on September 9, 2007