I'm hoping someone else has wired up a couple of Seymour Duncan humbuckers to an Ibanez with this switch and can give me a bit of advice... Thought I had what I needed with this Seymour Duncan wiring diagram. But then as I'm about to remove the Ibanez stock Quantum pickups, I realize my 5 way switch (3SWLSC) doesn't look like the switch in the SD diagram. (See image below for my switch; bottom wires are original neck pickup, top is original bridge which only had 3 wires.) All of the stock pickups wires were only running to this switch and touching nothing else. The neck pickup had the 5 wires shown in the bottom of that pic but the bridge humbucker only had the three wires you see in the upper right. That red & black wires on the top left then ran to the volume knob. I'm not trying to do anything fancy or out of the ordinary, and was just going to replicate the original wiring configuration. Currently stuck not sure what to do next. Tired of Googling with no luck, thought I'd ask you guys. Really hoping somebody here has some experience with a similar situation.
Which exact guitar and what pickups are the original pickups? Also what are the colors of wires in the top of the photo, it's hard to tell because of heatshrink tubing
My guess is the COLD HOT upper refers to the top coil of the neck pickup Start and Finish; which for Seymour Duncan is Black (start) and White (finish). The lower coil is Green (start) and Red (finish). The OUT goes to your potentiometer, and the bridge TAP is where you probably take a North and a South wire and solder them both to that lug, while the other North and South go to HOT and GRD. That’s what I’d try anyways.
Guitar is a 2018 Ibanez RG7421PB. The stock pickups (shown below) were Quantums. The one with the green housing was in the bridge and looks like it only contained 3 wires (red, white and a bare ground in black heat-shrink tubing). They were the wires at the top of the first picture at the top of this thread. Here's a more complete shot of the original wiring:
Please forgive my ignorance but I thought green was "ground", but the bottom right of that pic recommends green to "Hot"; Is that right?
that one scheme should be good if you have a reverse polarity sentient since most of the time Ibby puts RP pickups in the neck (should say rp in the sticker next to Sentient), if it's a regular one then it should probably go bare-green-red-white-black from left to right in the bottom, top is ok
Green is the start of the winding on the lower coil. It goes to ground for a typical series/out of phase (humbucking) use. This switch seems to want each wire separate, and I’m assuming that the start means HOT and the finish means COLD. EDIT: unless, like @oversteve says, the reverse polarity isn’t standard, then try the GRWB left to right.
I'm not sure whether or not my Sentient is an RP or not. Not seeing that on the packaging or on the label underneath the pickup... However, now that you mention that, I did find it peculiar that the Sentient's wire housing exited the pickup from the opposite corner I expected it to. What I mean is, the Nazgul wiring exited the pickup directly where the hole in the body of the guitar was there for the wire to go into. But if I had put the Sentient in that way, the SD logo would've been upside down (which seemed wrong). So I installed it as the pictures below show. If that was wrong, please let me know quickly before I put the strings on.
So I went by the image scheme @DudeManBrother provided combined with the non-RP recommendation by @oversteve and everything works and sounds good. I really appreciate you two taking the time to advise and provide images. That helped more than you know. Cheers to you guys.
@Sentient Is there any way you could post a picture of how it looked when you finished it?! I am trying to put in the Pegasus/ Sentient set in my same style ibanez and its driving me crazy!
look at the picture few posts before, the top row marked there, and the bottom row bare-green-red-white-black from left to right
Sorry, I don't have a good image of my final soldering (was so relieved to get it done I forgot to snap a pic) but , here's an update of the image originally provided by @DudeManBrother showing what @oversteve described above. This is what I did:
Can't you just match the wires' color codes and wire up the Nazgul Sentient exactly the way the Quantums were wired? Often when I switch pickups, I just figure out the color codes and swap the joints one at at time until the new pickups are wired and the old ones can simply be unscrewed and removed.
I have the same switch in an RGA42FM and I am trying to replace the Quantums with Gravity Storms. Are the Humbuckers in your example opposite polarity? I am trying to determine if I need to flip the wiring or magnet of the neck GS when I install it.
@Sentient @oversteve yeah i did that, and thanks for that by the way! The bridge sounds perfect, but the neck pickup (from the middle part of the selector and on) feedback a lot. The sound is still coming out and sounds okay, but you can hear the buzz behind it. thats why i was hoping to see yours. but if that's what you did then i guess i am missing something else entirely! any ideas?! Thanks!
no. ibanez's OEM pickups don't follow duncan wiring colors, so you have to swap some around. I don't remember if all ibby OEMs follow dimarzio wiring codes or not, but that's usually a good place to start ime since ibby regularly uses dimarzios.
Oh I know Duncan's colors don't follow the OEM colors. That's not what I was trying to say. Sorry for the confusion. I was saying to find the analogous wires and arrange them the same as the wires you're replacing and then replace one joint at a time. Not that you should use the exact same colors, but make the same connections whatever the colors may be and that replacing each one at a time can help in avoiding confusion like this.
essentially one of these wirings for the neck pickup should work depending on the type of SD pup you have: from left to right bare-green-red-white-black bare-white-black-green-red bare-red-green-black-white bare-black-white-red-green