When I removed Steve's Special and Air Norton from my JPM, I drew a quick sketch so I'd know how things were. This is how I found it (sorry for the crappy drawing):
Now, I'm putting in Crunch Lab and LiquiFire, and the diagram on DiMarzio's site for 3-way with split center shows this:
You can see that the green and bare are NEVER together, like they are in my drawing (but that's how I found it). And if you've played JPM before, you know that the center position sounds like it has combined split coils. So how can the wiring be different? Did DiMarzio change the wire color-coding over the years or no?
Sorry, I'm new to all this pickup wiring business, but I'm trying my hardest to get it right. Can somebody shed some light?
don't mind wiring the schematics on the DiMarzio site, just rewire it the way it was before. and no, they haven't changed the wire color-coding since the '70s, they just put standard schematics on their site, while the JPM wiring is not a standard schematics.
I just looked at the DiMarzio diagram......... theirs is to set the split centers in paralell. this one sets them in series I think, which would make sense. Series will give you more power and still be hum-cancelling
Hmm, thanks for the Ibanez diagram. I'm gonna call DiMarzio today just to see what they'll say... But yeah, my gut tells me to wire it the original way, too.
Now, do you think I SHOULD wire CL and LF the same way SS/AN were wired? I tried to find some info on how Petrucci wires these pickups in the EBMM JP6, but I didn't find much out there.
Just called DiMarzio, and they said that the 3-way SWITCH used by Ibanez is NOT the same as DiMarzio's 3-way switch (even though they have the same number of pins and look the same on chart, they are in fact, different). He said to use the wiring from Ibanez, so I guess that's what I'll do.
Wiring and soldering went well, and I've just finished jamming a bit. Sounds good and the pickups behave as expected when being controlled by the 3-way switch.
Now, one thing I noticed is that the middle position (split coil) center is a good deal quieter than full bridge or full neck pickups. I mean, that's to be expected, and I certainly know this was the case before with SS/AN, but it just *seems* that the volume difference is even greater with CL/LF. But maybe that's just my initial reaction. The pickups are overall hotter than SS/AN, so maybe that's throwing off my perception a bit.
Either way, I have to say that overall, I'm not disappointed so far, but I'm not all that impressed either. But truth be told, I've only had a chance to play the guitar through my BOSS GT-6 using headphones, so we'll see how it'll sound through my Mesa Boogie. It could be that these pickups just don't shine that well in a digital amp-modeler device such as the GT-6. At this point, I feel like SS/AN sound slightly better on the GT-6. Or it could be that the patches I had made previously weren't tailored for these pickups. We'll see how it behaves through a tube amp.
just for fun, I would try putting the black lead (from the neck pickup) on the same lug that the white is on....sort of a mirror image of the bridge pup. See if that helps the volume issue........... I'm thinking it will. It may change which coil turns on when in the split mode, but you can just turn the pup 180 degrees to make it the inner coil again.
You'll also have to move the green to ground......... your basically switching the green and black wire's positions, but the black will go to the whites lug instead of the red's. In the end, it will perfectly mirror the bridge pickup's wiring.
Doing that will mean the neck pickup is permanently wired in parallel, it won't fix any volume difference.
The volume difference won't go away, its normal, because you have the inner coils in parallel.
Also, if you mirror the bridge pickups wiring, it will mean the middle position is no longer hum cancelling.
I have already closed everything up and put away my tools, so I'll let things stay the way they are for the time being. I'll see how it all sounds when I actually plug into my full rig. If I have major issues with the volume difference in middle position, I'll think about alternative configurations. For now, the bridge and neck positions are most important, anyways.
Btw, I had posted a photo in my post #8 above, but it's now gone (it was there before). So here it is again...
Had trouble with my laptop when I tried to record with Mesa, so I gave up for the time being. Back at home, though, I recorded a few clips with just my Boss GT-6. Since I had another thread about this, I thought I'd post there, as this one was more about wiring... Feel free to continue the discussion there:
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