Electric Guitar Humbucker Wiring Ideas

Alex from the UK had a question about electric guitar humbucker wiring:

Hi, I've been doing up my guitar by changing the stock pickups to some aftermarket dimarzios. I then decided to get a push pull potentiometer so i can split the humbuckers. After getting the push/pull Potentiometer I found there are no diagrams on how to install it properly. PLEASE help. There are two humbuckers going into two volume pots and one tone pot. Thank you

Ok, I don't quite have enough information for your guitar humbucker wiring. So I am going to assume a few things. First, you are going to replace the tone pot with the push/pull-pot. Second, the push pull pot has six pins, center set of pins is common, outer pins are push-on, pull-on, and three, there is no three way switch?

So with two volume controls you can effectively shut off one or both humbuckers, or dial one in, or both for some two humbucker action.

With two split coil humbuckers you don't have enough switching to take advantage of all of the guitar humbucker wiring options available. You effectively have four single coils, and can arrange them in many different ways.

The Dimarzio pickups should come with a spec sheet that tells which coil is wired with what color wires. Typically there is a red wire, hot, two wires that can be tied together, or are tied together like a black and a white, and a green plus a bare wire which are both grounds.

With your limited options I would keep the bridge wired as a humbucker. Run the hot lead to the volume pot leg that is not wired to ground, wire the center lug of the pot to the end lug of the tone pot. Of course run the bare, and green to ground.

Run the hot lead of the coil closest to the neck to the other volume pot outer leg. Run the center lug wire of the same pot to the same tone lug as the bridge pickup. Now take the two wires that tie the neck pickup together and solder those to one of the center lugs of the switch, then run a wire from the corresponding end lug of the switch to ground. This way when you ground the two tie together wires, you end up with a single coil. In fact if you have a six pin switch you can split the bridge pickup as well

That's it, now you can run just the bridge in humbucker or single coil, the bridge and the neck in humbucker or two single coils, the neck in humbucker or single coil

These are just some of many options, a few DPDT switches would come in real handy, or a five way rotary switch. I realize that trying to follow this without a diagram is confusing, Seymour Duncan has some great wiring diagrams, and Dimarzio has many switching options check them out. Good luck, J.B., 3-25-11

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