Wiring an old Dimarzio four conductor

[Mark C]

I have an old dimarzio SDS1 strat pickup that has the following wires: White, Black, Green and Bare. Does anyone know how to wire this pickup? The Dimarzio site has nothing describing how to wire this pickup and I've looked around the net to no avail. Thanks, Mark

[Mike9]

http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/pickups/images/dimarzio-1.gif

[Mark C]

Thanks Mike, but mine doesn't have a red wire. It's only got Green, White, Black and Bare.

[Chikn]

It must be a tapped single coil. If you have an ohm meter, check out the resistance between the various wires. Most single coils use white for hot and black for ground, so start there. The green is most likely the tap wire, so measure the resistance between the white/green combination. You should probably email DiMarzio to find out if the tap is supposed to go to ground or the output.

[EADGBE]

Email DiMarzio. They'll tell you within a day usually.

[Deaf Eddie]

IF YOU HAVE A MULTI-METER, this may help (or not):
http://www.deaf-eddie.net/drawings/unknown-color-code.doc

It COULD be a dual-coil pickup, in which case that doc will help you figure out which lead is which, but my money is that it's a tapped single coil, like Chikn sez (above). The FIRST test for that would be, if NONE of the three colored leads has continuity with the bare wire, then, that's it, it's a tapped single-coil. Skip the "humbucker/four-conductor test" of that doc.

If that's the case, the bare wire is the independent ground/shield lead, and goes to ground no matter what you do with the rest of the pickup's leads. The two leads with the highest impedance will be the hot and ground, the third lead is the coil-tap. If you just want to play the pickup as hot as possible, simply tape off the tap-lead and you're good to go.

Which of the other two leads will be your hot and which will be ground would be detirmined by which way you connect it to play in phase with your other pickups - that might require a little trial and error. You'll KNOW if you have the phase incorrect - just swap the hot and ground leads, but leave the bare wire alone.