Category: Wiring Advice

Guitar Pickup Wiring Advice and Guides

Looking for help wiring your guitar pickups? This section provides general wiring advice for Warman® humbuckers and single coil pickups, along with practical ideas for modifying and upgrading your guitar’s electronics.

Whether you’re performing a simple pickup replacement or experimenting with more advanced wiring mods, these guides are designed to help you understand how guitar electronics work and how to get the best tone from your instrument.

Electric Guitar Pickup Wiring Ideas

Pickup wiring is one of the easiest ways to customise your guitar’s sound. With a few simple wiring changes, you can unlock a surprising range of tones.

Some of the common wiring projects covered here include:

  • Basic pickup replacement wiring

  • Phase reversal switches

  • Coil split and coil cut wiring

  • Series and parallel pickup wiring

  • Creating multiple tones from a single humbucker

These modifications allow guitarists to explore different tonal options without replacing their entire guitar.

From Simple Pickup Swaps to Full Guitar Builds

Whether you are:

  • swapping a pickup in your favourite guitar

  • installing Warman humbuckers or single coils

  • adding a new switch or tone control

  • or building a custom guitar from scratch

you’ll find helpful wiring diagrams, tips, and advice here.

Even experienced guitar builders occasionally need a quick wiring reference, and beginners often discover that guitar electronics are much simpler than they first appear.

Make Your Guitar Sound Exactly the Way You Want

Electric guitar wiring doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right guidance and a soldering iron, you can create a guitar that delivers exactly the tone you want.

Explore the guides below to find pickup wiring ideas, modification tips, and practical advice for getting the most out of your Warman pickups.

Who knows — you might even end up building your own screaming tone monster along the way.

Warman® Guitars designs affordable humbucker and single coil pickups for electric guitar upgrades, helping players worldwide improve tone, output, and reliability without paying boutique pickup prices.

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Adding series / parallel wiring to a Tele using a push pull pot.

Here is a nice modification to add a fourth tone to your Tele style wiring by giving you the option of using the neck and bridge pickups ( mid position on the 3 way way switch ) in either series, like a wide spaced humbucker ) or in parallel , the standard tone.

You will need to make a small modification to the wires of your neck pickup, which is hopefully one of our Southern Belles. There is a small jumper wire that goes from the metal casing tabs to the black output wire of the of the pickup. You need to snip this connection through so that the casing is isolated from the black wire. You then need to make a new connection by soldering a new wire onto the casing tab and connect this new wire to the common earth circuit on your guitar.

As always don’t forget the wire up the earth connection need from your metal guitar bridge baseplate into the common earth circuit of the guitar to avoid unwanted buzzing when you take your hand off the strings etc.

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Tele wiring with Twin rail bridge with series / parallel / coil cut switching

A quick sketch of how to wire up one of our twin rail Tele bridge pickups ( same wiring for Peacemakers of Twin Loco / T-rail Blazers ) with a 3 position mini toggle switch for both rails in series, single coil cut or both rails in parallel. Please note the toggle switch has to be a 3 position DPDT on-on-on switch for this to work correctly. Don’t use the commonly found on-off-on switches.

The 3 position lever switch used to select the different pickups ( bridge, bridge and neck in parallel, or neck on its won ) is shown as the import version of the 3 way lever switch which has 7 contacts on the bottom edge. The middle contacts used for the hot out signal to the volume control ( that’s the A500k pot in the diagram ) Good wiring practice also say that you should run a wire from the casing of this switch to one of the common ground points, usually the back of one of the pots, just to make sure the earth circuit is complete, along with the ground wire ( not shown ) that runs from the metal bridge of the guitar to common earth.

The tone cap value is not shown as its up to you to play around and experiment with what sounds right to you. Standard would be a 0.47 or 0.33 tone cap but there is no right or wrong here, try a few different values and discover what makes you happy.

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Wiring a pickup selector switch using a 3 way on-on-on mini toggle switch.

Warman DPDT 3 position on-on-on mini toggle guitar switch
Wiring a pickup selector switch diagram

Wiring up a 3 way mini toggle switch to act as pickup selector switch is really easy. It gives the option of bridge pickup, neck on its own or, in the mid position, both together. All it takes is wiring some jumper wires side to side across the switch lugs of the switch. Then connect the hot wire from the neck pickup to one end of the switch. Next connect the hot wire from the bridge to other end of the switch. Lastly wire a hot out wire from the centre connections to the connector for the tip of the jack socket. That’s it, job done. Easy guide to Wiring a pickup selector switch.

Just make sure you use a 3 position Double Pole Double Throw ( DPDT ) on-on-on type toggle switch.

Only a small 6mm hole is needed to mount the switch through. You can usually find room to squeeze one in somewhere. These switches are also used as series, parallel, coil cut switches. This is explained here.

Warman DPDT 3 position on-on-on mini toggle guitar switch
Warman DPDT 3 position on-on-on mini toggle guitar switch

These types of switches were used often on vintage Japanese guitars from the 1980s

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Passive Distortion pot for your electric guitar projects

Warman passive distortion guitar control

A Different Kind of Dirt – Passive Distortion Mod

Fancy giving your guitar a little extra attitude without splashing out on pedals or fancy gear? One of the simplest ways to do it is with a passive distortion circuit using Schottky clipping diodes. These little guys are cheap, widely available online or by mail order. They can transform your clean signal into a gritty, snarling tone in seconds. It’s a low-cost way to add a bit of edge to your playing. The kind of mod that makes your guitar feel like it’s got a secret personality.

The circuit works by using two diodes wired in opposite directions. This is called symmetrical clipping. Essentially, it squashes both halves of the audio signal evenly, which is what gives you that classic distorted sound. Think of it as giving your signal a gentle squeeze until it growls just right. No batteries, no active circuitry – just pure, unpretentious tone magic.

To get the most out of this mod, fit a 250k pot as your distortion control. You can use either A or B taper depending on how you like your distortion to respond. An A taper will give you a smooth, gradual increase in crunch as you turn the knob. While B taper will make the effect kick in faster. Perfect if you want instant bite at the flick of your wrist.

Because it’s a passive circuit, it won’t totally replace a dedicated distortion pedal. It does give you something unique and versatile straight from your guitar. Do it right, and you’ll have a subtle growl for bluesy bends, or push it harder for full-on rock attitude. Either way, it’s a cheap, easy, and fun way to add a bit of flavour to your tone. You don’t need to leave your bedroom or breaking the bank to get great tone.

Warman passive distortion guitar control
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How to wire a phase reversal switch into your guitar pickups.

An easy modification to get more tones out of your pickups is to wire in a phase reversal switch. This basically swaps over the signals from your hot and ground wire. A pair of pickups are wired “in phase” where they work in tandem adding to each others signal. When you reverse this signal they start to work against each other “ out of phase” and produce a thinner more trebly tone.

The further the pickup coils are away from each other the better, so this works best for neck and bridge positions. If you tried to do it on the two coils on the same humbucker, putting them out of phase with each other all you would acheive is a very thin, cancelled signal with a massive volume drop. Only one of the pickups needs to be wired with a phase reversal switch. Wiring two pickups this way would acheive nothing . Reversing the signal on both pickups would put them back in phase. End result – zilch tone change.

If you are planning on doing this on a 3 pickup guitar, like a Strat with 3 single coils fitted, then put the phase reversal switch ion the wiring of the middle pickup so that you can have positions 2 and 4 usable with it.

You can use either a standard toggle switch for this mod or a push pull potentiometer.

Its a fairly easy wiring job. First solder the two criss cross wires. Next solder the leads from your pickup to the two end pins of the switch. Finish off by soldering your output wires to the two pins in the middle. Then these two output wires go to your other guitar circuitry.


Job Done !

You can find push pull potentiometers for this job here

Suitable for either single coil or humbucking pickups.
Double Pole Double Throw ( DPDT ) 2 position switch wired for phase reversal.
Diagram shows the view from the underside of the switch body.