HOW DO I WIRE 2 P 90SLIKE A BIG HUMBUCKER

[FRANK]

THEY ARE SINGLE CONDUCTOR WITH BRAIDED SHIELDS IS IT POSSIBLE USING A PUSH PULL POT WITH THE VOLUME TO USE THE SWITCH SIDE LIKE TURNING ON A BIG HUMBUCKER HOW COULD I DO THIS THOUGH ?HELP

[Len Biglin]

Danelectro do it with the 3 way switch , in the middle pos'n it's a hummbucker . But I think you will get some noise as the braid on one p/up becomes the mid join of the hummbucker . Also I think they use a switch thats not connected in mid pos'n.Someone out there will know ......Len

[Russell Vance]

OK, the best way to do it is to buy a pair of P90s that are designed to work as a humbucking pair when both are on (middle position of a standard LP 3 way switch) due to one of the pickups being reverse wound/reverse polarity to the other - therefore being hum cancelling.(just like the two and four position of 5 way Strat switches with a RW/RP middle pickup).

Other way which works for some of them is to take out the bar magnets, flip them over and connect the output wires opposite to stock. This gets tricky with braided wire and some internal earthing can also muck up this procedure but, I have done it and it does work - I have however had this procedure fail for another generic set of P.90's which simply refused to do anything like I expected - don't know why and don't care as the commercial RW/RP sets solve the problem with no drama whatsoever.

[Joshua Levin-Epstein]

Paul,

If you're goal is to lessen noise, then you can do what Russell suggests. If you don't want to take one pickup apart, you can replace the one with one that is RW/RP. Logic would suggest you could get a Duncan neck pick up as they say it is RW/RP, but it is RW/RP to their bridge pick up, not necessarily to the one on your guitar.

Now if you're look for the the volume boost from running the coils in series, the diagram is on the duncan website (and many other places). You will need to replace the braided wire with 2 conductor plus shield, one conductor each for the start and end of the coil. After you've wired this to the switching pot, the "normal position" will have the guitar function (yes) "normally". The pull position will feed the output of one pick up to the negative side (not grounded) of the other pick-up. This will give you more output and less highs. If one P/U is RW/RP, it will reduce noise. if not, it will increase noise.

Other considerations: Let's say you are wiring a les paul les paul style guitar, and you wire the neck pick up to feed the bridge pick up. The selector will need to be in the "both" or "bridge" position when the pick ups are in series, or you will have no output. I try to stay away from wiring that is finicky that way.

I did wire a Korean PRS with two Lollar P-90s, replacing the selector with a 5-way rotary switch. This gave me 1) Neck and bridge in series, in phase (humbucking), 2) Neck alone, 3) Neck and bridge in parallel, in phase (humbucking) 4) Bridge alone 5) Neck and bridge in parallel, out of phase. This was a pretty complicated wiring and in the end I didn't really like the rotary switch. But it was intuitive (it went from loud to soft).

If you're able, the 4 way tele Mod switch is the easiest way to do this. Once again it goes from loud to soft.

Joshua