Tele wiring conundrum

rico

I have replaced the bridge pick in my Keefcaster to a Bare Knuckle Boss and now the middle position is out of phase (white is hot with BKP right?) and I plan to replace the PAF type pickup in the neck to an Oil City humbucker-sized P90 because the PAF is just too muddy with the current pots. The thing is, the P90 has three wires (bare, red, black) and it has flummoxed me. To complicate matters, I have a push pull pot that originally split the neck humbucker.

How can I wire up the Boss and the P90 so that I don't have the out of phase in the middle position and what could I use the push pull for? Maybe both on in series?

Merci!

ICBM

rico said:

I have replaced the bridge pick in my Keefcaster to a Bare Knuckle Boss and now the middle position is out of phase (white is hot with BKP right?) and I plan to replace the PAF type pickup in the neck to an Oil City humbucker-sized P90 because the PAF is just too muddy with the current pots. The thing is, the P90 has three wires (bare, red, black) and it has flummoxed me. To complicate matters, I have a push pull pot that originally split the neck humbucker.

How can I wire up the Boss and the P90 so that I don't have the out of phase in the middle position and what could I use the push pull for? Maybe both on in series?

Unless the P90 is tappable it has a separate ground wire, so reversing its phase is easy. Keep the bare wire grounded and swap the red and black. ( @TheGuitarWeasel may want to confirm that.)

What can you use the push-pull for? A phase switch of course! Or series if you prefer, but if you found a neck humbucker too muddy then you will find a Tele bridge pickup and a P90 in series even more so, I think.

OilCityPickups

ICBM said:

rico said:

I have replaced the bridge pick in my Keefcaster to a Bare Knuckle Boss and now the middle position is out of phase (white is hot with BKP right?) and I plan to replace the PAF type pickup in the neck to an Oil City humbucker-sized P90 because the PAF is just too muddy with the current pots. The thing is, the P90 has three wires (bare, red, black) and it has flummoxed me. To complicate matters, I have a push pull pot that originally split the neck humbucker.

How can I wire up the Boss and the P90 so that I don't have the out of phase in the middle position and what could I use the push pull for? Maybe both on in series?

Unless the P90 is tappable it has a separate ground wire, so reversing its phase is easy. Keep the bare wire grounded and swap the red and black. ( @TheGuitarWeasel may want to confirm that.)

What can you use the push-pull for? A phase switch of course! Or series if you prefer, but if you found a neck humbucker too muddy then you will find a Tele bridge pickup and a P90 in series even more so, I think.

I normally supply my HB sized P90s with two conductor and shield cable so the phase can be reversed easily ... however there is something odd going on, because my output wires are black (coil start), white (coil finish) and bare ... there's no red wire in my output cable.
On my HB Mighty 90/Jazz 90/Smooth 90 you simply reverse the black and white wires to reverse the electrical phase ... the bare wire always goes to ground (it's connected to the pickup baseplate internally).

Funkfingers

rico said:

Oil City humbucker-sized P90 ... three wires (bare, red, black) 

Photographs of this pickup might clarify matters. Failing that, a d.c. resistance meter should help to identify what each of the wires is doing.

One other thought. Was the pickup purchased brand new or pre-owned?  

thegummy

rico said:

I have replaced the bridge pick in my Keefcaster to a Bare Knuckle Boss and now the middle position is out of phase (white is hot with BKP right?) and I plan to replace the PAF type pickup in the neck to an Oil City humbucker-sized P90 because the PAF is just too muddy with the current pots. The thing is, the P90 has three wires (bare, red, black) and it has flummoxed me. To complicate matters, I have a push pull pot that originally split the neck humbucker.

How can I wire up the Boss and the P90 so that I don't have the out of phase in the middle position and what could I use the push pull for? Maybe both on in series?

Merci!

On my Bare Knuckles (as well as the wiring diagrams on their website) the red is hot

thegummy

Sorry, forget that, it's different for humbuckers, the white does seem to be hot for the Tele bridge

rico

Hi all, sorry this P90 is an IronGear - the Oil City is for another guitar. The IronGear has bare, white, red wires. The Boss has white and black and when it was in another tele, it also put the middle position out of phase...is this pickup reverse wound or reverse polarity?

ICBM

rico said:

Hi all, sorry this P90 is an IronGear - the Oil City is for another guitar. The IronGear has bare, white, red wires.

In that case swap the red and white wires. Given that it has the option it's better to reverse the neck pickup than the bridge, unless you know for sure that the bridge is not grounded via the pickup baseplate.

rico said:

The Boss has white and black and when it was in another tele, it also put the middle position out of phase...is this pickup reverse wound or reverse polarity?

You can't tell without a means of checking the magnetic polarity or examining the coil connections. If you have two pickups you can tell if they're the same polarity or opposite by holding them face-to-face and seeing if the attract or repel - although that will only help with those two pickups, you still don't know the real polarity - for that you need to use a small compass.

Funkfingers

Connect up the BKP Boss pickup with white as "hot" and black as ground.

Use the red and black conductors of the IronGear pickup to correct any phase/polarity issues.

Begin with red as "hot". Keep the bare and black separate just in case the red and black conductors need to be reversed.

The push-pull pot could be used to interconnect both pickups in series but I am not sure that the result would sound especially pleasant.

Other possible uses include;

• a mute/kill switch to silence the guitar
• a tone pot bypass switch - mainly for making the bridge/Treble pickup sound more like a Fender Esquire
• a capacitor selection switch. Choose whether the tone pot is vintage, modern or the Eldred mod.