SD Hotrails, I have questions.

[jerime]

I'm putting a seymour duncan hotrails in the bridge position on my Washburn WI36 (the tele/idol guitar). My problem is I've put it in and the stock neck pickup is louder than the Hotrails. This can't be possible can it? How should the hotrails sound in comparision to say my seymour duncan jb I have in another guitar?

[Low_fidelity2100]

did you wire it correctly?

Green and Bare should be soldered to Ground (normally the back of the volume pot)
Black is hot and should be connected to The switch.
Red and White Should be Soldered together and wrapped in tape.

If the pickups Quieter than the neck single, Odds are you didn't connected Red and white, Or didn't tape them, and they shorted out, Effectively Causeing the hotrails to become a Single coil.

Or you might just need to adjust the Height of the pickups.

[jerime]

Yeah, I wired it just like that. I didn't really consider the height of the pickup. That may be the problem. Is there a general guide for the height of the pickup?

[Empty Pockets]

higher = hotter and more likely to get mushy (especialy with a hot rails)
lower = quieter and more defined

I liked my Hot Rails as close to the strings as possible when it was in my Strat...matched with the two vintage single coils, i could use the Hot Rails more like a distortion channel than a bridge pickup...was definitely cool, I think i want another guitar with that set up one day...

-X

[jerime]

How do I check the output of the Hotrails to make sure it is working properly?

[jeremy]

its hard to test the output but it basically comes down to two things. is the magnet on the bottom working and is there continuity between the coils.

testing the magnet should be pretty easy. to test the coils youll need a multimeter set to dc resistance, between the black wire and the green wire it should read around 17,000 ohms or 17k ohms. you wont get an accurate reading if the pup is wired in the circut of the guitar.

when setting pup height push the strings down at the last fret. i find single coil size humbucker bridge pups work best pretty close to the the strings