Golden Age Guitar Pickups

To wire the pickups as a standard humbucker, the red wire is hot and the bare wire is connected to ground. Tape off the white wire so it won't come into contact with other wires or components. For a "coil-cut" use a mini toggle switch or a push/pull pot. When wiring a mini toggle according to the diagram, the lever in the down position will give you full humbucking output. When switched up, the north or "slug" polepiece coil will be cut and the adjustable polepiece coil will be active. If you use the diagram for wiring a push/pull pot, you may wish to swap the red and white wires. This will give you a coil-cut function when the pot's shaft is pulled up.

Pickup height adjustment
The pickups shouldn't be adjusted too close to the strings. For humbuckers, there should be about a 3/32" - 1/16" gap between the top of the low E pole piece and the bottom of the low E string fretted at the highest fret, and 3/32" - 1/16" for the high E. Humbuckers can typically be adjusted closer to the strings than single-coils since they don't have as much focused magnetic pull. You should experiment with the height of your bridge and neck pickups to get the best balance in output and best overall tone. Adjusting pickups any closer than the outlined distances can cause false notes or "wolf tones." See Pickup Height and Adjustments for single-coil pickups for greater details on the phenomena.

Les Paul wiring diagram
This wiring setup is considered the standard for Gibson-style instruments. It utilizes a separate volume and tone control for each pickup. The "middle" position of the pickup selector switch doesn't allow you to individually control the two pickups' volumes. If you have turned down the neck pickup's volume to "5" and then go to the middle position, both pickups will be at "5".

You can alter this or any other dual volume control instrument to allow you to separately control volume when both pickups are active. Simply reverse the input and output wires on the volume pots. Then, the volume control of one pickup won't affect the other.

It is not possible to make the tone controls work independently in the middle position. Since the tone controls work by bleeding part of the signal to ground, and ground is shared, they cannot be isolated.

When wiring the long runs (i.e. from the volume to the jack), use shielded or coaxial wire. Coaxial cable is like the cable used between the guitar and an amp. The outer braid is ground and it shields the inner "hot" wire. In the Les Paul diagram below, the thick wires represent coax wire. Use non-shielded wire for connections between pots and other small jumpers. Generally, the white wire is used for "hot" connections and the black is for "ground" wires.

Single coil
Golden Age single-coil pickups are manufactured to replicate the tone and response of vintage single-coil pickups. However, unlike vintage pickups, the middle pickup is reverse-wound, reverse-polarity. This gives the player a hum-canceling output in the "two" and "four" positions of a 5-way pickup selector (when the middle pickup is combined with the neck or bridge pickup).

There are also various output versions of these pickups available as well as different magnet types. This allows you to tailor the pickups to your sonic needs. Higher output pickups are typically used in the bridge position. This is to compensate for the difference in vibrating string energy that is "seen" by the bridge pickup compared to the middle or neck. The higher output pickups can be used in the neck and/or middle positions, but the output balance may be compromised.

Optional pickup shield: Golden Age single-coil pickups have a copper shield surrounding the coil for additional 60-cycle hum suppression. The copper shield is attached to ground (black wire).

If you need to swap ground with hot, but still want the copper shield to work, desolder the small jumper from the black wire and the copper shield. Then solder the jumper between the hot wire and the copper foil.



Pickup height and adjustments
Pickups shouldn't be adjusted too close to the strings. For single-coils, there should be about a 1/8" gap between the top of the low E pole piece and the bottom of the low E string fretted at the highest (21st or 22nd) fret, and 3/32" for the high E.

Adjusting single coil pickups any closer can cause false notes or "wolf tones." If you've ever played a Strat® that sounded like you were getting two notes from one string (usually the wound strings) in the upper registers, you have witnessed this anomaly. It is most often referred to as "Strat-itis" and can cause a lot of head scratching unless you know what is happening. To cure the problem, simply back the bass side of the neck and middle pickups further away from the strings.

First, a simple wiring diagram for a single volume and tone control, and one pickup. Once you understand the components and how they work in this diagram, you're well on your way to understanding virtually all aspects of guitar wiring.

Simple volume & tone wiring

The typical Stratocaster diagram below utilizes our #3192 "gold-contact" lever switch. You can install an open-contact lever switch with the spring facing, or the control pots—there is no electronic difference. Typically, the spring faces away from the pots.

Custom setups and wirings
The first variation uses master volume and tone controls and a 5-way switch. The next diagram allows you to use the Golden Age humbucker and two Golden Age single-coil pickups with the #3192 switch. In position 4 (bridge and middle) the bridge humbucker will be coil-cut.

3 single-coil pickups with master & volume tone controls




Humbucker/single-coil/single-coil wiring
In position 4 (bridge and middle) the humbucker is coil-cut.




Humbucker/single-coil/humbucker wiring
In positions 2 (neck and middle) and 4 (bridge and middle)
the humbuckers are coil-cut.