Pickup Wiring on RGA121

[John01W]

Hi folks, I took my RGA121VLF to my local Ibanez dealer(Great dealer, do great work on setups and guitar repair), I had them put dimarzios in(air zone, air norton). The switch for these guitars are not your regular switches, so he was wondering about what was going on when he got a wierd reading when he tested it from one of the positions (position 2 i think)..., so he wired it up totally different than the very cool configuration( bridge, two inner coils, both full hum, neck in parallel, and full neck in 5th position).... which is one of the very cool things about this guitar.

I sent him the wiring diagram from Ibanez

http://www.ibanez.com/wiring/diagrams/2005/RGA121.pdf

http://www.ibanez.com/wiring/diagrams/2005/RGA321.pdf

whats the word on these cool switches....basically the switch does all of the work yes? He wired it up totally different and I'm really kind of not feeling good about it.

The 121 (v7)bridge is 2 conductor, but the air zone is 4, so I sent him the RGA321 wiring diagram.... I'm not getting what's the problem. Can anyone help me out here please?

Thanks,
John

[Scott of Actual Time]

Originally Posted by John01W

I took my RGA121VLF to my local Ibanez dealer... had them put dimarzios in(air zone, air norton)... he wired it up totally different than the very cool configuration( bridge, two inner coils, both full hum, neck in parallel, and full neck in 5th position)....

whats the word on these cool switches....basically the switch does all of the work yes? He wired it up totally different and I'm really kind of not feeling good about it.

yes, that non-standard switch does all the work to make the unusual connections in that very cool Ibanez two-humbucker switching scheme. you can do the same scheme with a 24-pole switch, but you have to wire in lots of jumper wires. that scheme has been in use as far back as the RG7620 in 1997, but maybe your tech couldn't figure it out.

the other complication with pickups like yours in a two-humbucker setup that i've seen techs clueless over is the magnet polarity in the neck pickup. dimarzio doesn't make its pickups in a specific neck version. so in a two-pickup setup, if you have a pickup like the AN with one coil of screw pole pieces and one coil of flat slug ploe pieces, you have to install that neck pickup backwards [screw pole pieces closest to the bridge] to get the right magnet polarity for the two inner coils to hum cancel. if you want the pickup not backwards but the inner coils still hum-canceling, you have to open the neck pickup up, pop the magnet out, rotate it 180 degrees, and pop it back in. many techs don't seem to know anything about that.

the bottom line i think is if you're not feeling good about what they did to your guitar, you should take it back and make them fix it like you originally wanted it, at no extra charge.

[John01W]

The thing is, he has finished it for me, but the air norton neck is in the correct orientation..... I don't know if there is enough lead to flip the pickup around unfortunately.

I called dimarzio and he was really against opening up the pickup and flipping the magnet around 180 degrees.... is this even possible with a dimarzio? He said it would mess up the guitar lol.


What I don't understand...is the J-customs have almost the same pickup config(TZ, AN) with the same switch, but it doesn't appear that the neck pickup is reversed.... what gives...

don't know what to do here.

I sincerely appreciate it..

[buddroyce]

That looks like a Cor-Tek switch, I took one apart once after replacing it with a 3-way for a customer on his RG1527, and if I recall, you're getting wierd readings because that switch was designed to work with the two wires from the bridge pickup and the 4 wires from the neck. As this is a more or less a 'custom' switch, it doesn't follow standard switching schemes. In fact, when I tested it, it didn't make any sense until I followed the tracing on the inside of the switch. Other than position 1 and 5, the other 3 positions actually jump between side A and B and also merge the two (if you don't get it.. don't worry, it's a pain in the rear end switch that I would just swap out for a normal 3-way or 4-way CRL switch)

If the pickup is working and you're getting it REVERSED in the neck, swap the green wire with the red wire.

[John01W]

so let me get this right, reversing the red and green leads on the neck pickup will effectively do the same as reversing the orientation of the pickup, or flipping the magnet....

it will be the two inner coils like it is supposed to be?

Sorry man, if I knew this stuff I wouldn't have to take it to the tech.

I sincerely appreciate the replies, you've all been a big help... I really hope I can get it worked out.

[Scott of Actual Time]

Originally Posted by John01W

so let me get this right, reversing the red and green leads on the neck pickup will effectively do the same as reversing the orientation of the pickup, or flipping the magnet....
it will be the two inner coils like it is supposed to be?

let me back up a bit. the switch poles and how you've got it wired determine what coils you're getting in what positions. that switch is weird, but if you follow the wiring diagram it works fine. and the two inner coils will be on in position #4, one position up from the bridge.

but that combination of both inner coils might not be humbucking. you need two things for a pair of coils to be humbucking--they must have the direction of the wiring coils running opposite to each other [one clockwise and the other counter-clockwise], and they must have opposite magnet polarities [one North, the other South].

if you swap the red and green leads, you will change the direction the signal is moving through the wiring coils [clockwise vs counter-clockwise]. however, that will not change the magnet polarity. the only way to make the inner coils hum cancel with an Air Norton in the neck is to install the pickup backwards [screw-head pole pieces toward the bridge] or to pop the magent out and flip it.

if you know what you're doing, it's not hard to open the pickup and flip the magnet. if you don't feel confident about it, DON'T DO IT. you could ruin the pickup if you don't get the magnet cleanly out and back in. that's probably why the DiMarzio guy didn't advise it--he didn't want to feel responsible if your pickup ended up trashed. flipping the magnet might also void the warranty--i don't know.

Originally Posted by John01W

What I don't understand...is the J-customs have almost the same pickup config(TZ, AN) with the same switch, but it doesn't appear that the neck pickup is reversed.... what gives...

they must have either flipped the magnets, or left the inner coils position not hum canceling. or DiMarzio made them a special neck-only model Air Norton. there's no other way to do it.

[John01W]

thanks man, that helped a lot. I'm not gonna mess with it....I will usually leave that position for clean anyway... maybe one day I'll jack with it, but I'm just happy that he got it wired up correctly.


Thanks a bunch.

[John01W]

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