four humbuckers pickup wiring diagram – all hotrails and quadrail

Recently i installed my spare pickups to my Fernandes FR 55, they are Duncan Designed hotrails pickups and a quadrail pickup(brand unknown). It is temporary until i get the pickups i want,though. but here’s some problems i encounter when i installed them:

– can’t find the right phase for all pickups

– cable colors are confusing

well, it’s actually only two problems, but i spent the whole day to get the right phase for these pickups. you can solve this problem with an AVOmeter, but since i don’t have it, i have to try it one-by-one with cablejacks and miniamp to test the connectivity.

and this is what i got from that:

hotrails  quadrailFYI: i forgot to draw the unwrap cable output from pickups, but i solder them all to ground. and consider that some unknown brand using different cable color for hot and ground. this was my real problem with the unknown brand quadrail pickup.. it has the same cables colors, but when i connected them according to seymour duncan cable coding, it is gone out of phase.  the pickup wiring diagram above is exactly what I’ve done to get the right phase.

the sound i got from that pickup wiring diagram:

i use the coiltap to split all the pickups. so in lifted-coiltap, i have S-S-H pickups formation.  AND, in pushed-coiltap, i have the H-H-HH pickups formation.

the output is actually awesome, BUT, my pickups are the default factory ones, so, their sound quality isn’t that good. can’t get more clarity, since the default pickups usually are average-to-bad pickups. it’s muddy, but i can overcome that with compression pedal.

but, i tell you, this could be awesome if you have high-quality hotrails and quadrail pickups. the hum-cancelling works perfectly. there are no noise on my guitar sound output. the tone is actually hum-free with very good sustain. but i need better hotrails and quadrail, though, to get the wood tone comes out of my guitar. (my fernandes is maple neck and mahogany body, tough one)

 

and i destroyed my guitar pickups! – fail guitar pickups wax potting

well, this is embarrassing. i read some pickups modification and had decided to do pickups wax potting. actually it was my fault. i just didn’t get the thermometer and my wax was overheat. here i share you the fail guitar pickups wax potting pics:

they are destroyed Fernandes pickups. the plastic shrunk and i totally fucked up this time. they are not in reversible shapes. but one thing that interested me.

Fernandes pickups destroyed after wax-potting, only G&L pickup were survived

from all those destroyed pickups, there is one survivor. i have a G&L pickup which is not affected by the heat.. it is in great shape and ready. it was the same process since I’ve put them together in the same time and duration.

from this DIY guitar stuff this is my worst ever. actually i kept the wax in moderate heat.. but the pickups plastic material just couldn’t stand up against the heat. well, thanks to G&L pickup which stand by my side. it is tough enough to defend me against the shrunk pickups case.

it’s a hard lesson for me. and all i can conclude are:
– depends on what kind of pickup plastic materials, wax potting could be freakin dangerous to your pickups.
– MAKE SURE THE HEAT IS APPROPRIATE. it’s 65 degree Celsius or better below.  don’t worry about pickup magnetism against the heat. i did this and check the magnet were totally fine. you need to pay attention more to pickups plastic material.
– be ready to buy new guitar pickups. if you’re in low budget, postpone the wax potting until you get enough money to cover your loss.
– if you consider your pickups are antique, just let them be. or you can take the chance to be like me, who curious about any guitar stuff.

well, since I’m a curious guy, I’m gonna put those destroyed pickups into my guitar (my first guitar, which become my lovable experiment objects.

shoot, it was a big failure but i feel so HAPPY … this is what I’m talking about in guitar learning process.