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Basic guitar circuit wiring.

So here’s todays ramblings on how to do some basic wiring up stuff. A fairly simple arrangement of 2 pickups – a neck and bridge – with a there way switch ( both 8 lug lever witch and 3 way toggle switch variants ) with a master volume and tone control.

The diagrams show this done with 2 single coils but the principle is the same for 2 humbuckers but you might want to swap the 250k pots for 500k pots just to let a bit more of the treble through.

As with all pickup wiring the hot / plus / positive – whatever you want to call them – leads go to the switch lugs and the ground / negative / earth leads connect up into the common earth circuit, which also hooks into the bridge earth wire otherwise it’ll hum like billyoh when you aren’t touching the strings.

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Basic guide to Warman wire colours on 4 wire humbuckers.

The Warman twin coil humbuckers all pretty much follow the same wire colour codes as follows.

Bare wire. This is the overall group wire for the pickup and needs to be connected to a common earth point on the guitar. Typically this is the back of a pot.

Black. This is the negative ( – ) wire of the first coil, sometimes called the start wire.

White. This is the positive ( + ) wire of the first coil, sometimes called the finish wire

Red. This is the negative ( – ) wire of the second coil. ( start )

Green. This is the positive ( + ) wire of the second coil ( finish )

To wire this up as standard humbucker with both coils i series. Connect black and bare to the back of one of the pots ( common earth circuit )

Leave red and white joined together , they come pre-soldered to each other . Wrap some insulation tape around this solder joint to avoid accidental shorting our of the coils when you stuff all the wires back into the guitar cavities.

Connect the green wire either to the input lug on you volume pot or the pickup selector switch, this will depend on how your guitar is wired and its control layout .

Single coils

Single coil pickups have just 2 wire coming out of them. This will either be a single twin core cable or two individual leads, depending on model. single cable versions have an inner and outer core to the wire, the inner is the hot wire and the outer is the ground / negative wire. If the pickup has two individual leads then one of these will be black, which is the ground wire, and the other coloured lead will be the hot wire.