[comopasta]

Hi,

I have an old IBZ USA C1 vertical humbucker.

Recently I got a Squier strat guitar to play luthier and mess with it. I like the neck, I did a proper setup and after getting used to the smaller frets it is nice to play despite the low price tag.

The original electronics are extreme crap and I'm in the process of upgrading all that. Good pickups will come later but since I have this C1 I am considering to place it on the neck position.

The pickup has two black cables connected together and then a green and a red cable. I'd like to wire it single coil, but I don't know how to do it. Any clues how to do that?

Maybe someone might have an opinion on these pickups, is it worth the effort to install it?

My intention is to put SD SS1s on this guitar.

Thanks.

 

[tony777]

The way I do it: I extend the short black wires. I use a multimeter set to resistance (ohm) The short black that has connection with red, I extend with a black wire, the one that connects with green I use a white wire. Then you have the DiMarzio color code. For a single coil wiring there is two options, depends on the wiring of the pickup it's going to be in parallell mode. (neck and middle for instance) Anyway you need to solder together white & red. Then connect green to ground and black to hot. If this is out of phase together with another pickup, simply switch the green and black.
One more thing you need to be sure of is that the magnet poles need to be the other pole than the adjacent pickup.
Good luck.

 

[comopasta]

The way I do it: I extend the short black wires. I use a multimeter set to resistance (ohm) The short black that has connection with red, I extend with a black wire, the one that connects with green I use a white wire. Then you have the DiMarzio color code. For a single coil wiring there is two options, depends on the wiring of the pickup it's going to be in parallell mode. (neck and middle for instance) Anyway you need to solder together white & red. Then connect green to ground and black to hot. If this is out of phase together with another pickup, simply switch the green and black.
One more thing you need to be sure of is that the magnet poles need to be the other pole than the adjacent pickup.
Good luck.

Thanks for your response. I don't have a multimeter. Lets see if I can try it out at some point.

It would be nice to know if someone has set this pickup like that to know if the sound is good and it is worth the effort.

 

[tony777]

I actually use the C1 in my RG3120 prestige. I did a routing to get a middle single coil and tried many pickups to find out which sounded best in the particular guitar, and the C1 was the winner. It sounds very close to a C2, which is to my ears identical to DiMarzio HS-2.

 

[comopasta]

Thanks again for the details. I actually have a screwdriver that also verifies connections, so I was able to identify to which each short black connects.

Like I mentioned the Squier Strat is loaded with crappy pickups and I could try it there as the neck pickup. Or would you recommend it as middle pickup?

I'm a bit afraid that the C1 will put the Squier pickups to shame, so I don't know if it is a good combination before I get other good pickups as well. But definitely your tips help a lot when I finally install it.

I'm a big fan of Frusciante tone so I'm saving for the Seymour Duncan SS1s. If the C1 combines well with the SS1 I would save one pickup.

Cheers.

 

[tony777]

The C1 will work in both neck and middle, but probably a bit weak for bridge. If the Duncan is hotter I would use that one in neck position. But by all means experiment.

 

[ashbass]

They are great sounding pickups left as humbuckers. You won't gain anything by splitting them except for noise. The resulting single coil sound isn't better than the stock sound. IMOOC