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Got my new P-tone pickup for my AB1, and decided to let the local guitar shop install it, since I don't trust my soldering ability, at least not when located so near such a gorgeous piece of lumber. Also, if I did it, it'd be at least another month before it got installed.
I just got it back and...I'm not sure it was such a good idea. they didn't exactly do a hack job on the solder, but its not pretty, and more importantly, the A/D/G strings sound really thin vs the D/E strings, and I can only hear a sonic difference in one of the 4 positions on the rotary switch. I took a look at the wiring and it just doesn't feel right.
The P-tone pup didn't come with wiring instructions, just a sticker on the back with the color of the wires and +/- designations, was there supposed to be installation instructions with the pup? Here's a picture of how it was installed - how SHOULD it have been installed, so I can fix it?
1. neck black (-), neck white (-), bridge black (- or ground?), bridge red (+)
2. neck red (+)
3. bridge clear (- or ground?)
4. neck green (+), neck clear (ground)
if the picture doesn't show, here's the URL: http://flic.kr/p/dnBNHE
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It looks like there is some solder bridging between pad 3 and 4. See if that's the case and then see if you can remove it with an xacto knife or small file.
Thanks Sheldon, you are correct, there was a solder bridge. I cleaned it up with a pair of nail clippers last night, but it was late and the kids were in bed already so I wasn't able to plug it in and see if that fixed everything. So the wiring locations are actually correct then? The fact that both negative leads from the new P-tone were ganged together had me concerned that at minimum the two coils in the P-tone were out of phase with each other.
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Hold tite. Jeff took a look at the photo and noticed the wires are in the wrong places. He'll prepare a photo of a switch with proper wire placement and post it later in the day.
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Here you go. This will cover both series and parallel wiring of pickups. The P-tone is normally wired in series.
To avoid any confusion. Our pickups have two coils which can be wired in either series or parallel independently of the rotary switch.
The rotary switch also combines the pickups in series or parallel but further down the signal chain.
The final check is to make sure every position on the rotary switch sounds rich and full relatively speaking. If the combination positions have a thin and nasally tone the pickups are out of phase and the + and - leads need to be reversed.
oh, one last question. For the FD3 pickups, is the wiring Black (-), Red (+), Clear (ground), just as per the P-tones? I don't think those pickups had a handy color coodinating sticker on the back. right now my bridge FD3 pickup has the clear going to pad 3 and and black and red going to pad 1. Not sure if that's what it was before I took it in, or whether they accidentally de-soldered them when taking out the neck pickup, and put them back in the wrong place. I strongly suspect the latter.
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Your vintage of bass could have the bridge pickup wired in parallel. It will match the P-tone better of it's wired in series. If you follow the photo above you should be able to tell which way it is.
this is an '05 vintage, and the FD3's only have 3 leads, so I guess they're default wired in parallel. On that vintage, can you confirm between the black and clear wires, which should be negative and which should be ground? the way they're currenlty wired in, clear would be negative and black would be ground, provided they're wired correctly per your picture above.
Once I get everything wired in correctly, I'll see if I want to play w/ the tone further and maybe pick up a current-generation pup w/ 5 leads to put it in in series. if I were to pick up a second pup, do you recommend another stock one, or a second P-tone?
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