P pickup wiring - help needed, please.

[solo4652]

I'm replacing stock pickups on my new Harley Benton Shorty with some Entwistle PBXN's. The stock pickups have one wire to the volume pot and one wire connecting the two pickups and nothing else.The Entwistleshave an extra wire which, from the diagram supplied, looks like it may be an earth wire from the neck pickup. Is that correct? Where would I anchor this extra earth wire, please?

Apologies - this is my first pickup swap and I was expecting to find exactly the same wiring.

[BassBunny]

Steve, does the existing wire to the Vol pot have a central wire and a shield round it ?
I have played around with an HB and they use shielded wired for the pickups IIRC.
The central wire, (usually black) is the "hot" and goes to the Vol control with the shield, (which is strands of wire ) going to earth.
Could you take a pic and post up here?

[Grangur]

Hey Solo, as BassBunny says, every pickup has to have 2 wires:

1 hot wire - connects to a terminal on the volume pot.
1 earth wire (this might be the shielding on the same cable as the Hot wire) this goes to the casing on the volume pot.

Here's a generic wiring diagram

[solo4652]

[attachment=225249:100_0883.JPG]


Here's the HB wiring. The yellow wire from the front pup goes to the volume pot. The black wire runs between the two pups, and is the only wire connected to the rear pup. In my naivety, I was rather hoping I'd be able to snip some wires, drop the new pickups in and reconnect using those little wire connector thingies without any soldering. Given that the HB wiring looks a bit different to the "standard P wiring" diagrams I can find online, I've already given up on that idea - could well be a trip to an instrument tech. tomorrow,

Edited August 10, 2016 by solo4652

[BassBunny]

The yellow wire is actually 2 wires Steve. The central black is the "hot" and there is a shield round it that is soldered to the body of the Vol pot.
The wiring is standard P Bass Vol/Tone wiring, just done using different type of wire. Do you want to bring it round and I'll sort it for you?

Edited August 10, 2016 by BassBunny

[solo4652]

I think I can see what you mean. Looking closely at the yellow wire, I can see a number of wires emerging from it and joining to various lugs on the volume pot. If you could possibly install the Entwistle pickups for me I'd be most grateful, since I haven't got a clue (or a soldering iron!). I can't find your address - if you could send it to me via PM with a suggested meet-up time, I'll pop round. How kind you are.

[BassBunny]

Have sent you a PM Steve.