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There are several ways to troubleshoot electric guitar wiring. If the guitar exhibits no output from any of its pickups the first thing to check is the wiring at the jack and the switch. One bad solder joint at the output of the switch or at any one of the four connections for the output…

Phase refers to the relationship of two sine waves (signals) to each other. If both signals are at their highest peak (+) at the same time they are in phase. If one signal is at its highest peak (+) while the other signal is at its lowest peak (-) they are 180 degrees out of…

First, let’s define some terms. “Machine Winding” – a machine spins the bobbin and moves back and forth at a regular pace, distributing the wire evenly across the bobbin. “Hand Winding” – a machine spins the bobbin, but the magnet wire goes through the hands of an operator who distributes the wire along the bobbin….

A coil tap refers to a lead connected to an individual coil’s winding and is used to raise and lower a pickup’s output and change its tone. This is most often utilized on single coil pickups where the player wants a higher output pickup but also wants to be able to switch to a lower…

Coil splitting refers to the ability to disable one coil in a humbucker-type pickup. This offers the player option of getting a single coil-type tone from a humbucker-loaded guitar. Many pickups have three- or four-conductor wiring that allows for one coil to be disabled by shorting one coil to either ground or hot. All production…

The Jimmy Page wiring is a fairly complicated switching system made famous by Jimmy Page and was later used in Gibson’s line of Jimmy Page Les Pauls. It uses four DPDT switches and incorporates coil taps for both pick ups as well as a phase switch on the bridge humbucker and a series/parallel switch for…

A good starting point for the distance from the bridge pickup to the strings is 3/32 of an inch. The neck pickup can be set to provide a good output balance when compared to the bridge or to produce a particular tone when used together with the bridge. If a pickup is too close to…

The difference between the two preamps is the value of some of the components. If you use the wrong one, you may experience limited range in the treble control. Also, when you blend two pickups to together, you might experience some output loss. The prices are the same for the Active & Passive models (but…

At the end of the production process, all STK-S4 pickups are fine tuned for hum-canceling. Each pickup is essentially ‘injected’ with hum, and measured for the amount hum it cancels. To achieve the maximum amount of hum-canceling, a small resistor is often used to fine tune each pickup. Since each coil that we wind is…

The two most common reasons are to make different manufacturers’ pickups phase compatible and also it is necessary in order to get PRS 5 way switching to work properly.