Is color code on this hot rails wrong?

[peter_s]

Hi guys. I have this pickup on strat and i think it's hot rails for neck but i'am wondering is it original because color code is white, red, black and dark blue. Also pvc insulation around these wires is dark gray. Here are some pics. Thanks.

[frankfalbo]

Someone replaced that cable. Try to follow the wires from the bobbin to translate the colors.

[Zerberus]

^^ if the guy that replaced the original cable used his brain, then red = red, white = white , Black = black and blue = green.

Unfortunately, chances are good he didn´t

[peter_s]

Wires from the bobbin are same color. I was wondering was duncan ever using different colors cause i think i had different duncan pickup with same colors as this one.

[Zerberus]

Looking at the baseplate, I´m actually not sure that´s a real duncan... on all of the Duncan single sized hums I´ve ever seen, the ground was soldered to the baseplate on BOTH sides of the magnet. The ground wire is point soldered on one side, extends over the magnet, and is point soldered again on the other side...

That and the lack of sticker make me think it may not be a real Duncan... I´d shoot a pic but a bro has my cam, but I have a HR bridge literally in my hand that´s how I described...

BUT i can tell you which wires are which on an real duncan, that may help...

White............................................. ......Black

Green............................................. ......red


so if my green is where the blue one is on yours (and it appears that way), then you should get by with standard duncan wiring if its a duncan or at least wired the same

[Funkfingers]

Originally Posted by peter_s

Did Ibanez had pickup that looks like hot rails? Or some other maker?

I honestly can not remember any Ibanez "in-house" HR-style pickup designs. They usually buy in DiMarzio or Seymour Duncan items or "co-design" with those manufacturers.

Plenty of other manufacturers have "borrowed" the HR idea.

Originally Posted by Zerberus

I´m actually not sure that´s a real duncan... on all of the Duncan single sized hums I´ve ever seen, the ground was soldered to the baseplate on BOTH sides of the magnet. The ground wire is point soldered on one side, extends over the magnet, and is point soldered again on the other side...

+1 on this.

Also suspicious is the scuffed up appearance of the entire fibreboard portion of the top of the pickup. i.e. EXACTLY where you might have expected a manufacturer's logo to have been screen-printed on.

Looking at the underside of the pickup, I'm none too keen on the piece of insulation around the white conductor. As has been pointed out, the bare ground wire is only soldered to one polepiece bar. This means that the second bar is not properly grounded. There is no evidence to suggest that original Seymour Duncan Pickups factory soldering has been undone in order to fit the present cable to your pickup.

The polite name for what you appear to have is a bodge-up. Sorry.

[Funkfingers]

Looks to me like Ibanez cable.

[peter_s]

Did Ibanez had pickup that looks like hot rails? Or some other maker?

[Funkfingers]

Captain's log - supplemental: If somebody had asked me to identify the mystery HR-style pickup from the photographs alone, my guesses would have been...

1) Kent Armstrong / WD Music
2) Patrick Eggle (pickups made especially for PE by KA)
3) Yamaha 80s RGZ*

Twenty five years ago, Yamaha was pandering to the Metal market with bold paint jobs and not-quite-FR double-locking vibrato systems. One of the RGZ Series models of the period featured a high-output humbucker nearest the bridge and a slanted back single coil sized pickup nearest the end of the (inevitable) 24-fret fingerboard.

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?im...1%26ie%3DUTF-8

The mystery HR pickup in this thread reminds me of that Yamaha RGZ neck pickup.

* Actually, thinking back, the Yamaha RGZ with a Hot Rails on it might have been my particular example. Usually, the low price model had a regular single coil. D'oh!