John Beef
Opaque
I decided to swap pickups in the black CU22. Simple. No big job. Just put the DGT pickup I never should have removed back in the bridge instead of the Duncan Custom 5, and put a matching brushed nickel cover on the Duncan Jazz in the neck. The DGT pickup was no problem.
I put the cover on the Jazz, with a little wax inside and soldered on the cover, and then it fell on the floor, bending one of the legs. I tried to bend it back and it snapped clean off. Ugh. So, I removed the cover and started installing one of the extra baseplates I have. Got it all put back together and realized I ran the lead cable the wrong way, so I took it apart again, put it back together again with the lead cable correct this time, installed the pickup... but it was too high, taller than the fretboard, even though it was at the max length of the height adjustment screw. The legs on the new baseplate were taller than the stock Duncan one. So, I had to fish out longer screws and redo that.
Then I finally got to wiring but had been drinking pretty well at this point. Normally wiring is not a problem for me. But I thought I screwed that all up too, and gave up for the evening out of frustration.
I didn't screw up the wiring after all. One of the coils in the Jazz died, and I'm not sure how. The slug coil measurements were bouncing around in the 10 megaohm range, whereas the screw coil was a solid number around 4K.
There was only one other neck pickup in the spare parts bin. A few years ago I bought a used set of PRS SE 245 pickups for next to nothing. Yes, I was going to put a SE pickup in my Core guitar! At least for a little bit. This set had chrome covers added to them which was not going to do as chrome is awful. I desoldered the cover and then tried to pry it off, but was having trouble because whoever put the cover on filled the pickup to the brim with wax. I should have heated it up, but instead, I stabbed the slug coil with the screwdriver. Another dead coil.
The solution seemed to be to take the two working coils and join them to form one good pickup.
Having no idea how to wire this mongrel, trial and error was the only solution. The first attempt resulted in the pickup being out of phase with itself and providing almost no output. The second attempt corrected that, but was out of phase with the DGT. I reversed the hot and ground, and it worked and actually sounded like it was going to be a good pairing.
Measured a nice 8.17 which is typically the range I dig for neck humbuckers.
I did not have a brushed nickel cover with 12 holes for the screw pole pieces, but I did have an open top cover, so installed that, and buttoned everything up. It looked funky in the guitar, but I could order a 12 hole cover and maybe have a keeper in my hands.
It was not to be. Installing the cover caused something to ground out internally. No signal at all in the neck and middle toggle positions.
Removing the cover was the beginning of the end. The solder refused to melt. I put so much heat into it with the soldering iron that the coils warmed up a bit. The lead wire from the SE pickup coil came undone from the actual coil wire. I removed the tape around the coil and the coil wire started to unwrap from the coil. I was not successful trying to solder onto the wire thinner than a human hair. I can try researching how to re-attach these things together but man, at some point you gotta pull the plug. A used Jazz is only going to be like $50.
I put the cover on the Jazz, with a little wax inside and soldered on the cover, and then it fell on the floor, bending one of the legs. I tried to bend it back and it snapped clean off. Ugh. So, I removed the cover and started installing one of the extra baseplates I have. Got it all put back together and realized I ran the lead cable the wrong way, so I took it apart again, put it back together again with the lead cable correct this time, installed the pickup... but it was too high, taller than the fretboard, even though it was at the max length of the height adjustment screw. The legs on the new baseplate were taller than the stock Duncan one. So, I had to fish out longer screws and redo that.
Then I finally got to wiring but had been drinking pretty well at this point. Normally wiring is not a problem for me. But I thought I screwed that all up too, and gave up for the evening out of frustration.
I didn't screw up the wiring after all. One of the coils in the Jazz died, and I'm not sure how. The slug coil measurements were bouncing around in the 10 megaohm range, whereas the screw coil was a solid number around 4K.
There was only one other neck pickup in the spare parts bin. A few years ago I bought a used set of PRS SE 245 pickups for next to nothing. Yes, I was going to put a SE pickup in my Core guitar! At least for a little bit. This set had chrome covers added to them which was not going to do as chrome is awful. I desoldered the cover and then tried to pry it off, but was having trouble because whoever put the cover on filled the pickup to the brim with wax. I should have heated it up, but instead, I stabbed the slug coil with the screwdriver. Another dead coil.
The solution seemed to be to take the two working coils and join them to form one good pickup.
Having no idea how to wire this mongrel, trial and error was the only solution. The first attempt resulted in the pickup being out of phase with itself and providing almost no output. The second attempt corrected that, but was out of phase with the DGT. I reversed the hot and ground, and it worked and actually sounded like it was going to be a good pairing.
Measured a nice 8.17 which is typically the range I dig for neck humbuckers.
I did not have a brushed nickel cover with 12 holes for the screw pole pieces, but I did have an open top cover, so installed that, and buttoned everything up. It looked funky in the guitar, but I could order a 12 hole cover and maybe have a keeper in my hands.
It was not to be. Installing the cover caused something to ground out internally. No signal at all in the neck and middle toggle positions.
Removing the cover was the beginning of the end. The solder refused to melt. I put so much heat into it with the soldering iron that the coils warmed up a bit. The lead wire from the SE pickup coil came undone from the actual coil wire. I removed the tape around the coil and the coil wire started to unwrap from the coil. I was not successful trying to solder onto the wire thinner than a human hair. I can try researching how to re-attach these things together but man, at some point you gotta pull the plug. A used Jazz is only going to be like $50.
