Wiring Help! (Dimarzio FRED)

[Destroyer Of Senses]

Sorry about the second thread but I ended up getting my RGT320 (AMAZING guitar btw) and I also got a FRED to replace the stock bridge pickup.

I checked all the connections and they were all solid, heres my main question about the wiring....


The Question: When swapping from a Dimarzio/IBZ pickup do you replace the color coded wires? (example red for red, white and black for white and black, green for green, and bare with bare? The only problem I can think of is something gone wrong with the wiring.

What I did was replace the red wire on the same lug, the black and white on the same one, the green to ground and the bare to ground with the ground of the neck pup, anything here I did wrong?

Heres the problem:

There was no thickness to it, almost no bass. The higher strings were pretty damn clear although they sounded VERY thin, the lower strings sounded somewhat muddy. There was almost no power and barely any output. There was no 'sweetness' which I found very strange especially from a pickup that was custom designed by Satch. There was also no string or harmonic feedback that you get from sustaining a note for too long; which is something I LOVED about the stock bridge Dimarzio/IBZ I replaced. In all honesty I thought the neck IBZ on the guitar was a better lead pickup by at least 10 than the FRED is, the IBZ really sang and had great sustain, overall lovely tone. Another thing I noticed that seemed strange was the amount of hum this thing has. In positions 2,3,4 and 5 its almost dead silent (more so on 2,4,5... 3 has a tiny bit of hum) but position 1, which is all FRED, there was a bunch of hum.

[j.arledge]

everything sounds right , i looked up the ibanez wiring diagram. Be sure to check all your solder points , even a single thread of wire touching a lug it isn't suppose to can mess up the switch .

check all your ground wires , it shows that the pickup's ground goes to the switch instead of the back of the volume pot which is sort of strange , it all gets grounded out but still a wierd place to solder the pickup's ground to .

make sure you didn't un-solder any of the other wires on the switch when you tool the old pickup out .

if your still having problems , unsolder the fred , check it with a multi-meter and solder it back in .


http://www.ibanez.com/wiring/diagrams/2005/RGT320.pdf

all the colors should be same as above to the fred you are putting in .

[Destroyer Of Senses]

I'll tripple check..

How do I check a pickup with a multi-meter?

[j.arledge]

wire the green and bare together , the white and black . the green and bare are your ground , the red is hot .

turn your meter to ohms and put your two probes on thier the ground and hot .

the pickup should read around 10 ohms , give or take a bit . you can check the coil tap but sticking the hot probe on the white and black wires .


if your still having problems wiring the guitar up PM me and i'll see if i can't help you out more .

[Destroyer Of Senses]

Thanks a bunch for the help man, this whole thing is a bummer.

As referring to the diagram, I have a question. On the toggle switch it shows each of the wires going to one of the two holes on a terminal 'lug' (or what have you), do you think it would screw things up if the wire was touching both instead of just one? Also, in comparison to the diagram I have the black wire from the neck pup grounded with the two bare wires and the green grounded by itself, does it matter where the wiresare grounded or just that they are grounded?

These are the only other two things I can think of, I'll open my guitar up and take a reading while tripple checking what I have compared to that diagram.

[j.arledge]

if it is touching others that aren't connected in the diagram then yeah that could be a problem .

[Destroyer Of Senses]

Hmm I checked things out a bit and noticed that when I connected the black and white wires to the proper lug a bit of solder must have dripped over to the next lug connecting them, I got some solder braid and removed it and, to my ears, it sounds a lot fuller, theres more output. I think since it was connected there was some kind of short with one of the coils or something of the sort. So maybe I was only getting power from one coil isntead of both, I still dont understand the hum though, maybe I just got too used to EMG's?

[j.arledge]

the hum could be from a number of things . it could be a bad set-up, you picking up intereferance from another electrical source like a TV,light or computer monitor . It could be that one of your ground connections is off, it could be your amp or even a bad cable .

[Destroyer Of Senses]

Another little update. For some reason I had to reverse the phase of the pickup. I have no idea why Dimarzio would make you do this when intalling a pickup yet the directions say that the RED is hot and the GREEN is ground but when I tried to get a reading that way I got nothing, but then tried getting a reading as RED ground and GREEN hot and I got a reading. I have no idea how this sort of mix up could have occured. It was an easy fix, just switched the red and green wires, which on the instructions was the way to reverse phase. However when I removed the stock pup the red was hot and green was ground. Bah who knows what was wrong, the good news is that its working perfectly (or at least a LOT better than it was before) and now I can just worrying about playing the damn thing. haha

[j.arledge]

that is wierd , my meter will read it either way , just with the ground probe on hot and the hot probe on the ground it shows negative .

well whatever it takes , i am glad you got it working .