wiring routing question

[yamasaki760]

hello,

i'm working on putting together a project 540p and i had a question about how the original wiring routing was done.

did Ibanez run the wires under the center of the pickups? i dont see any channels/cavities in the body for the wire

heres my body

[RGTFanatic]

need some pics to help............

[yamasaki760]

i guess the pic is too big to post, heres a direct link to the pic

http://s14.postimage.org/6bh3yt1nk/IMG_0216.jpg

[RGTFanatic]

Originally Posted by yamasaki760

i guess the pic is too big to post, heres a direct link to the pic

http://s14.postimage.org/6bh3yt1nk/IMG_0216.jpg

Cool, Yes the middle pup gets mounted over the neck pups wires. Just don't crank down on the middle pup and smash them..........

nice guitar man!!!

[yamasaki760]

gracias.. i thought it was odd and didnt want to crank down on the pups over the wires. did ibby use any washers or spacers between the pups and the wood just to give a little clearance for the wiring?

i have some plastic washers el garaje and may experiment a little with this

[yamasaki760]

lookin to stay period-correct on this project after some mulling over..

[RGTFanatic]

looks good man...........Do you have springs under the pickup screws??

[yamasaki760]

only on the Humbucker in this pic, the singles are just mocked in place

[MichelIV]

I just wired up my S5EX1 body and with a Fast Track dual blade humbucker (size of a single) in the middle position, I found there wasn't enough room to lower the pickup with the top humbucker wires running underneath the pickup (four wire, ground and thick outer sheath). Strangely, my S5470 has a separate channel to run the wires through for the neck and bridge humbuckers.

I ended up creating a channel using a round file to lower the floor of the channel in between pickup routs AND create a channel below the middle single coil to help it clear the wires when cranked all the way down. I then lined the new channel with copper shielding tape as the pickup route had shielding paint on it.

Was a real PITA because i'd already taken the time to carefully wire up all three pickups before really checking just how low the middle pickup would go. Stupid. I learned to do that FIRST and start with the neck pickup and work your way down when soldering things up. Sometimes you have to do it twice in order to learn.

[yamasaki760]

thanks for the detailed response.

that's why i'm mocking everything up first! :-)

[RGTFanatic]

You won't have any problem with the two wires on the IBZusa pups...... they're very thin.

You DO need to use mounting springs on the pickups though......

They look like this:


http://www.guitarelectronics.com/pro...t-Springs.html

[yamasaki760]

yes, i have them and am using them

[RGTFanatic]

Originally Posted by yamasaki760

yes, i have them and am using them

Cool, just wanted to be sure....LOL

[yamasaki760]

ok, i got this piggy wired up but i'm having an issue with the humbucker.. i need some feedback from yous guys..

here is the base wiring loop before pickups



here it is with the pups wired



i know i wont be getting any calls from the Ibanez Custom Shop anytime soon, but I wanted to get it working and use it as a player for a while while I figure out what its long-term outlook is (resto?, player/gigger?, etc?)

Anyways, here's the issue:

1) Neck pup, sounds great, switch works fine (2 wires, white/hot, bare/ground)

2) Middle pup, sounds great, switch works fine (2 wires, white/hot, bare/ground)

3) Bridge Humbucker, sounds terrible, twangy/bright and very low volume.. but it does work.. switch works fine (3 wires, white/hot, red+bare twisted together/ground)

Is it possible the humbucker is bad? It only had 3 wires:

white
red
bare

I twisted together the red+bare and grounded them into the pot ground loop

The white wire goes straight to the microswitch..

thank you very much for the input/advice, and your insults as to my soldering work. :-)

[LonePhantom]

I think the red would be the hot wire. You've got it wired back to front I think.