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I have a 4 conductor MMK 45 that I want to split coils with. Wires are orange, red, black and brown. My plan is to wire a push/pull. Never having done one, I wonder if anyone can give me a clue as to what's what on the conductors - or how to determine which wire is which. Offhand I'd guess the black is hot, (to 3way) red not (grounded to pot), and orange and brown should pe paired and soldered to the mini switch for coil split. Anyone have experience with these???

I measure 5.83 with the Black and Red, 5.84 with Brown and Orange. So how do I figure which is hot for the switch, and which goes to ground on the pot?

mechanically, they are just open circuits, with the metal string vibrations causing variation in the magnetic fields surrounding the windings, thus generating a current signal on the wire.

there probably is one considered Hot, for standardizing the wiring at the factory, and you could look at another working stock set-up to see which is which, but technically it wouldn't matter what you would use...

because I do a lot of automotive wiring, I like to use black for grounds,
so I would do red/orange as the hots and black/brown as grounds.

or as the diagram below shows in color-independent fashion
with a start/finish : red/black & orange/brown.

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/produc ... ne001.html

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Thanks mcbrat.
So I think this is what I want then. The neck pup is 2 wire so it will be re-wired exactly as it was. The push pull will be the volume pot and the bridge will be wired red to 3 way, brown and orange to split the coil, bare and black to ground on a pot. Does that look reasonable??

since your orange and brown are for one coil, I think you have them wrong...

based on your meter readings

coil1:
black = start
red = finish

coil2:
brown = start
orange = finish

so red/brown should tie together, and orange goes to the selector.

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/produc ... -Taps.html

this is a better diagram for tapping one HB.

and I have to amend my previous post... the whole point of the HB is to cancel the hum, so the coils are wound in opposite directions along with the magnets being aligned in opposite directions, so it will have some effect on which is the start and finish of the coil, but I'm not sure how much if any...

without seeing a stock tap set-up, you would have to carefully inspect the pup and how the winding leads are attached to the wiring leads to truly determin proper start/stop...

it will work either way, but may not have the hum cancel effect...

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OK - How about this???
I'm thinking it should do it - but I sure do get myself confused. Appreciate the help....

Good news/bad news. Using the diagram above I have the pickups working correctly. A couple of weird things though. The volume pot hums pretty bad in every setting EXCEPT full bore - where it's dead quiet. The tone pot doesn't seem to do doodly. I stuck a 33 cap on instead of a 47 both situations have me scratching my head. I know this ain't rocket science but it sure seems like it is. Any ideas??????

the diagram looks good. for the hum, if all the grounds are tied together, then you'll need to reverse the start/finish on one of your pairs...

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So I'd guess the S Start is orange and s finish brown - I guess that's where I'll begin. Pairing up Red and Brown to the push/pull.

It looks like they're following the standard numeric color code:

0 = Black
1 = Brown
2 = Red
3 = Orange
4 = Yellow
5 = Green
6 = Blue
7 = Violet
8 = Gray
9 = White

So, the first coil start is black, finish is brown. Second coil start is red, finish is orange. 0, 1, 2, 3.

Same color code is used for resistors, transformer wires, multi-conductor cables, etc.

his test showed Black/red matched up though....

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Interesting info on the color schemes. so my push/pull needs to be brown/orange. It is somewhat confusing to me since the coil split did work. The grounds all seemed to check OK so the hum is also starnge to me particularly since it's dead quiet at only full volume.
Any ideas on the tone ultra?

DOH! well, yeah, that's a point worth noting!

I'm not sure what they have going on then. I'll have to look more closely when I'm not at work...

All done - Thanks for the help mcb and ultra! I basically de-soldered everything and started from scratch working with the red and black and then trying all the combinations. Once the push/pull was done I (naturally) found that the tone pot was semi-toasted so that got replaced too.

Pretty good results - the mmk45 bridge is a nice pickup (as we know) and it works pretty well the Ibanez Super 58 neck. I was a little surprised that the output of the S58 seems more powerful than the MMK - this may be partially due to wax potting the MMK and I also need to dial in the pup heights some more to really even them out. As I hoped, the middle position with the S58 and Single MMK is very nice - so.... mission accomplished and thanks again!


For the record - I wired it:
North Start - Red
North Finish - Black
South Finish - Brown
South Start - Orange

on the 4-wire MMK45's my experience is this:

brown/orange = coil A
red/black = coil B
(coil B being the one closer to the hole thru the baseplate for the cable)

output- brown
coil tap- orange/red
ground- black
cable shield is connected to the baseplate, no coil connection to baseplate within the pickup allows maximum flexibility for wiring schemes.

i just had to re-wire a pair of MMK45's from a Westone Paduak II, they had 4 wire shielded cables that were cut short and rewired incorrectly to a non-original setup for volume/tone controls. i used some new cable from stew-mac that worked easily, but the colors are not the same as the original cable. i unwrapped the bobbins and soldered the new cable directly to the leads off the coils. i had a direct look at how it was connected originally, as detailed above.



there is a wiring diagram for a Westone Rainbow II that has a 4-wire pickup cable and it shows the same configuration/connections from the pickup;
brown - output
orange/red - center tap (in this drawing they are on the PEQ which changes from series to parallel connection, but ora/red are connected when in series mode)
black - ground
http://www.westoneguitars.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Rainbow-II-Wiring.jpg?9d7bd4