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hi, I bought a humbucker to replace one of my stock pickups.

the new one came with 4 wires, while the old one had only 2. how do I wire it?

thanks in advance.

Which pickup? Every pickup I know comes with a wiring diagram. You need to wire the coils in series by soldering together two of the wires. The other two wires are now exactly like the two wires of the stock pickup. Which two get soldered? Beats me. There are ways of figuring it out, but easiest is to follow the wiring diagram.

i bought it used, no diagrams

Do you know what kind of pickup it is? Can you post pictures of the front and the back, and also give us any writing that's on them. This will be much easier if we can figure out exactly what pickups you have.

Here is a handy reference for pickup wiring.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

thanks guys.

it's a shadow humbucker. it has 4 wires: red, white and black, and another black, this one is thicker, so I believe it's the ground.

regarding pics, this is the best I can do right now:




edit: I found out that inside the thick black wire, there's the bare wire and a yellow one, wich I assume is the south start. just need to know wich one is the north start

Honestly, I don't know what you have. The bare wire is definitely a ground for the case. I still don't know what pickup it is or what the other ones are. I don't have much time now so I can't really explain the process of figuring it out. There is an noninvasive way to do it if you have a multimeter.

To know the answer to that you will either have to find out the manufacturer, or take it apart.
Otherwise, start soldering until you get it right.

so that's what i did, and got it right on my first attempt. i soldered the black and white together, and the red and ground to the circuit. it worked. I mean, not sure if properly, it's a lot of treble, not much low. sounds like a scream, i'd say a single coil. maybe only one half is working. but I gave up on this one.

time to move on to option number 2, a ibanez humbucker taken from a rg 450. it has 3 wires: ground (bare wire) red and white. easier to figure out?

I bet the black wire is the hot wire. I'd try the red and white together and use the black for hot. Black and white together may be shorting out one of the coils. At least this is the color scheme of all Chinese made humbuckers I've used. In addition, there's a green ground wire along with the shields.

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

If you have an ohm meter,
you can test all the leads until you find for example 7k ohms,
then connect different wires together,
and test the in and out,
and you will get twice the reading.
If it's 7k,
then the 2 coils together would be 14k.