Unsure about wiring of Dragon 2 Pickups in my Mira X

[lerniberni]

Hello,

I've put some new Pickups in my Guitar and Guitar and I'm not sure if I done it right. Though it sounds quite good, I'm confused.

I want to have 2 Pickups, One Volume and a mini-switch for coil splitting. The Dragon 2 Pickups have 3 conducters plus the shield.
Here is what I've done:

1. Replaced the Pickups for sure.
2. Put out the Tone Knob with the big capicitator.
3. Put in the Mini-Switch (On/On with 2 pins=6 pins)
4. Soldered the Bridge Ground to the Volume Knob.
5. Soldered the Shields to the Volume Knob as well.
6. Soldered the Hot (I have noticed that the color-codes of the Bass & Treble Pickups are different) to the Blade Switch.
7. Soldered the Ground of the Pickups (not the shield) to the middle pins of the Mini-Switch. Grounded that with the Volume Knob.
8. Soldered the the Coil Tap (Red) one End of the Mini-Switch.

What makes me so confuse is that put the same Pickups with the same configuration in another guitar of mine and I'm pretty sure, that I didn't use the ground-conducter(not the shield) that time. However: this didn't work this time. I had very little output until I tried to connect the grounds to the shield.

What are the grounds for anyway? Some out of phase/rotary switch stuff?

Thanks!
Nils

 

[Mixstar]

The grounds serves two purposes;

1-They complete the circuit the same as the battery on your car. The negative/neutral/ground, or whatever you want to call it, has to go somewhere.
2-They assist in noise cancelling and shields are normally connected to the ground. You may notice an increase in 60hz hum if you lift one ground from one of the pickups.

 

[John Beef]

http://www.prsguitars.com/csc/schematics/schem08/custom3waytoggle.pdf

Check out the above schematic, and just ignore the tone control section since it sounds like you removed yours entirely, yes? Just pretend the push/pull part is your mini-toggle. That should get you where you need to go.

Dragon 2s are wired the way they are so individual coils can be accessed in a way that lets the rotary switch combine the coils from each pickup in non-standard ways. That's why they're a bit strange to wire up in more normal ways.