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I need help from someone who knows a lot about the wiring of the electronics in a guitar. What’s really frustrating about this is that it’s a very basic design, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why the electronics are not working. I have emailed the techs at Stu-Mac, where I got the pick-ups, and they looked at my schematic, and after a few emails back and forth they suggested I take the guitar to a repair shop (and this really bothers me because I am the repair shop!).

I recently finished two guitars – both with two Golden Age overwound humbuckers from Stu-Mac. One guitar has pick-ups with 5 leads, and this one is working fine. The other has pick-ups with 3 leads, which does not work at all. Both guitars have one volume and one tone, and the pick-up selectors are two single mini-toggle switches. The neck pick-up is wired for coil tapping operated by a push-pull pot with the tone knob.

A few days ago I went back into the guitar and unsoldered everything. Then I tested each component separately – switches, pots, pick-ups and out-put jack, and everything checks out. I even wired the pick-ups directly to the output jack just to see if I could get a sound through the amp and they both worked fine. Everything is working perfectly until I connect it all together, and I have attached my schematic here. I would be very grateful if you could point out what it is that I have done wrong.

You mention a push/pull pot for the neck. I'd suspect that's where the trouble is, since those pots are wired a little differently than just a standard pot. According to StewMac, when you use a push/pull pot you should switch the red and white wire. http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_pickups/Pickups:_Guitar,_electric/Golden_Age_Guitar_Pickups/Golden_Age_Humbuckers.html?tab=Instructions#details
Try running the red wire to the push/pull pot (I assume that where you've marked coil selector switch represents the coil selector part of the pot, since that is what the push/pull pot is intended to do, as your schematic shows standard pots and a selector instead)and the white to the back of pot ground.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

try wiring it without the coil splitter. i can't remember which wires on the pickup you have to wire together, should be in the instructions. the last git i wired took 3 times desoldering, and it still ain't right. i'm leaving it as is for now. i've wired about ten guitars with no problems, go figure. some day i'll try rewiring it again.

I'm worried about switching the white and red wires around because when I select the coil tapping feature, and only one coil is being used, then I want that coil to be the adjustible coil, not the slug coil.

Wolf

Stewmac's instructions say you need to switch those wires when using a push/pull pot, so I don't really see any other option, unfortunately. But I would think they would try to keep the adjustable coil the active one. It won't cost you but a few seconds time to switch the two as suggested and see which coil is active when the pot is in the "up" position.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

don't know if you figured it out yet, but if you have an ohmeter, you can find out what the wires coming out of the pickup mean.
for instance, two wires should read say, 14k ohms, and the others would read 7k ohm.
just find the two pair that read 7k ohms, then connect one end of those, and you should get 14k ohms, dig?
the two single coils would be half of what the two together would read, then you'd know what's going on.
that's how i do it, with the help of the wiring diagram too.