EMG solderless system - yuk!

axisus

What a horrible over complicated bit of kit. I hate it, or more precisely I don't understand it and therefore hate it.

I bought some strat pickups and they came on a scratchplate with pluggy-inny bits all over. I figured that it would be fairly easy, just like wiring a guitar but without solder, but no, it is a horrendously scary thing with a million things to plug on to. I downloaded a pdf which is like 4pt text and full to the brim with jargon. Kill me now. Some of the wires had come adrift and unfortunately I have never been great with instructions.

Maybe you lot can make sense of this sort of thing, but it may as well be in Italian for me:

The 4-pin header labeled Bypass has 2 removeable shunts, one for each pickup signal. The shunt bypasses the EFX Send (S) and Return (R) headers and sends the pickup signals directly to the selection switch terminals. Only remove a shunt if you are using the Send and Return feature of the Switch Buss. If you are using passive tone controls the shunts need to be left in place.

so I either need to figure out something or bin they lot and buy some regular pots and a switch!

Danny1969

EMG's need the red wire to +9 of the battery and the black lead of the battery to the ring of a stereo jack socket and they need 25K or near pots. 
Other than that just wire them like any other pickup in terms of hot and ground. The last quick connect I wired up was done by junking all that shit and just wiring them up as above 

ICBM

I'm not a fan either. It's unnecessarily complex, potentially unreliable and can be awkward to get it all into the cavity. The only ones I use if I can help it are the connectors on the pickups themselves, and even those are better with a bit of hot-melt glue to prevent any chance of them coming off.

Funkfingers

For no apparent reason, some versions of the three-pin pickup connector plug come with little tab/wings to hold them in position. (Essential on a Jazz Bass bridge position pickup!) Others do not.

My chief bugbear with the fully solderless EMG harnesses is the amount of cavity space the pins and block connectors occupy.

Seymour Duncan and Fishman Fluence manage perfectly well with skinner cables. 

I like assembling hybrid solderless and hard wired harnesses. e.g. On my Warwick Corvette, the pickups are soldered to an EMG Buss board. The control pots were solderless, in case I ever decided to reconfigure from two volumes to master volume and balance or to add a stacked knobs active EQ.

Stevepage

Best thing is to check out EMG's video on how you use the solderless kit. 

skullfunkerry

I fitted a set of EMGs to one of my guitars following their instructions and found it ok... I absolutely cannot get my head around passive pickup wiring, though: I understand how a potentiometer works, but why does it have THREE connections?? And then some things get soldered to the back of it, not the tabs... and how can there only be one wire going to the jack socket, surely there needs to be two, to make a circuit? It makes my brain hurt  

ICBM

skullfunkerry said:

I understand how a potentiometer works, but why does it have THREE connections??

If it only has two connections, it’s not a potentiometer, it’s just a variable resistor (ie how a tone control is usually wired.)

A potentiometer - or potential divider - has to have three connections because it gives an output which is a fractional division of the input, from 0 to 100%.

skullfunkerry said:

And then some things get soldered to the back of it, not the tabs...

The casing is just a convenient ground point which also acts as a shield.

skullfunkerry said:

... and how can there only be one wire going to the jack socket, surely there needs to be two, to make a circuit?

There do need to be two, but the ground is often not shown on a diagram, either for convenience or because it’s achieved via a metal control plate (eg on a Fender Jaguar).

skullfunkerry

ICBM said:

skullfunkerry said:

I understand how a potentiometer works, but why does it have THREE connections??

If it only has two connections, it’s not a potentiometer, it’s just a variable resistor (ie how a tone control is usually wired.)

A potentiometer - or potential divider - has to have three connections because it gives an output which is a fractional division of the input, from 0 to 100%.

skullfunkerry said:

And then some things get soldered to the back of it, not the tabs...

The casing is just a convenient ground point which also acts as a shield.

skullfunkerry said:

... and how can there only be one wire going to the jack socket, surely there needs to be two, to make a circuit?

There do need to be two, but the ground is often not shown on a diagram, either for convenience or because it’s achieved via a metal control plate (eg on a Fender Jaguar).

I'm pretty sure there's only one going to the jack on my Jackson... but literally at I typed that I realised that the ground goes to the trem claw.

And the bit about a fractional division of the input... I understand the words, but I'm still none the wiser

prowla

skullfunkerry said:

ICBM said:

skullfunkerry said:

I understand how a potentiometer works, but why does it have THREE connections??

If it only has two connections, it’s not a potentiometer, it’s just a variable resistor (ie how a tone control is usually wired.)

A potentiometer - or potential divider - has to have three connections because it gives an output which is a fractional division of the input, from 0 to 100%.

skullfunkerry said:

And then some things get soldered to the back of it, not the tabs...

The casing is just a convenient ground point which also acts as a shield.

skullfunkerry said:

... and how can there only be one wire going to the jack socket, surely there needs to be two, to make a circuit?

There do need to be two, but the ground is often not shown on a diagram, either for convenience or because it’s achieved via a metal control plate (eg on a Fender Jaguar).

I'm pretty sure there's only one going to the jack on my Jackson... but literally at I typed that I realised that the ground goes to the trem claw.

And the bit about a fractional division of the input... I understand the words, but I'm still none the wiser

The ground must go to the jack socket and to the various points on the pots & pickups; however, it's possible that if the control bay is shielded they're using that instead of running wires.

The connection to the trem claw is a not part of the control circuit per-se; it's just grounding the exposed metal parts.

ICBM

The wire to the jack may be shielded cable - in fact it’s better if it is. Some of that is very thin and looks quite like a single wire. You’re absolutely correct that it wouldn’t work if there really was only one connection.

The way a potential divider works is actually quite simple -

Output voltage = input voltage x (resistance between output terminal and ground / resistance between input terminal and ground)

Does that help at all?

skullfunkerry

ICBM said:

The wire to the jack may be shielded cable - in fact it’s better if it is. Some of that is very thin and looks quite like a single wire. You’re absolutely correct that it wouldn’t work if there really was only one connection.

The way a potential divider works is actually quite simple -

Output voltage = input voltage x (resistance between output terminal and ground / resistance between input terminal and ground)

Does that help at all?

I can honestly say that I understand every individual word of that post