Got my 57/08's in today.

[Torvald]

Just did them this morning and they sound fabulous! It was a breeze except for two things. The previous owner of said pickups had put a bit heat shrink tube on the white wires, leading me to think it was the coil split wire. Also the McCarty wiring diagram shows the white wires going to the push/pull switch. Long story short it's the red wires to the switch. The other thing was that the bridge pickup screws were about half as long as the springs and after a frustrating half hour or so I just cut the springs a bit shorter. The neck pickup screws were longer and not a problem. I did the standard PRS 2.2k resistor for the bridge and 1.1k for the neck along with the .018 cap treble bleed and the split pickups sound excellent.
I wonder if the previous owner had them wired right?
Also sold my Vela today to a local guy, that's a pretty good musician, which helps me justify the McCarty.

 

[veinbuster]

Glad you like them

 

[Going Modal]

Honestly, who knows if the previous owner wired them correctly--you could be right there. There's so much misuse/misunderstanding of gear out there I'm sure it's more common than we think for somebody to wire them up wrong and then think, "These suck!" If the factory or a legit professional didn't do it, then it's always up for question.

Back to the real point here, though--57/08's are amazing pickups. Congrats! They're awesome...

 

[Torvald]

Honestly, who knows if the previous owner wired them correctly--you could be right there. There's so much misuse/misunderstanding of gear out there I'm sure it's more common than we think for somebody to wire them up wrong and then think, "These suck!" If the factory or a legit professional didn't do it, then it's always up for question.

Back to the real point here, though--57/08's are amazing pickups. Congrats! They're awesome...

They do sound awesome to me! I wouldn't be surprised if the previous guy did have them wrong. Especially given the incorrect wiring diagram (white to split). When I wired them that way the bridge sounded normal but the neck when split was very weak.

 

[László]

Seems to me you did well.

 

[JasonE]

PRS changed the wiring colors on the 57/08 pickups at least once since they started making them. I ran into this when I bought a set for one of my guitars. I wired them up the same way as they are in another one of my guitars and they didn't work so I contacted tech support to find out what the wire codes were. That is when I found out they were different. Depending on how old the pickups are and whether they came in a guitar stock or were bought from the PRS store, they could have different wire colors for the parts of the pickup. Where this was really obvious for me was that the ones in my guitars that were stock used the white wire for the tap. The ones I bought from the PRS store used the white wire for the hot. That is going to mess up your day if you wire the ones from the store the way the older ones were wired.

 

[bodia]

Nice

 

[Torvald]

PRS changed the wiring colors on the 57/08 pickups at least once since they started making them. I ran into this when I bought a set for one of my guitars. I wired them up the same way as they are in another one of my guitars and they didn't work so I contacted tech support to find out what the wire codes were. That is when I found out they were different. Depending on how old the pickups are and whether they came in a guitar stock or were bought from the PRS store, they could have different wire colors for the parts of the pickup. Where this was really obvious for me was that the ones in my guitars that were stock used the white wire for the tap. The ones I bought from the PRS store used the white wire for the hot. That is going to mess up your day if you wire the ones from the store the way the older ones were wired.

Odd that PRS would change the wiring codes. Fortunately I had researched it prior so I knew what was wrong. Simple fix.