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I pretty sure I found an old Electra Pheonix X630W rotting in my GF's attic. Bridge and knobs were rusted and ruined, but luckily, the neck is in great shape! The pickups were falling apart, but I glued the magnets back down and hopefully they work okay. Someone had also done a half-hearted job repainting it, so I repainted it with a little custom hand-painted design thrown in. Her dad said it was originally white, so I assume it's the X630W based on the headstock and description in the catalogue.

My question is how do I wire this pickup, as I have little to go on and the wiring diagrams on the Electra sites don't seem to pertain to this model. Right now, this is what I've done, as it's the closest looking thing to this bass that I've found:

http://www.westone.info/wiring/c1bass/index.html

When I plug it in and tap on the pickup, I don't get any sound. This is my first bass, but I know that's a reliable way of testing the wiring setup on a guitar. Am I going to have to put it all together and string it up to see if this will work, or does anyone have any advice/suggestions/changes that I should make before doing so?

Thanks!

Tapping on the pickup should make some sound, without the hassle of installing the pickups and stringing the Bass. If you use a screw driver or something metallic, it will be even more obvious. Do you have a basic Volt/Ohm meter? They can be purchased for $10 - $15 at most Radio Shacks or Harbor Freight stores.

With the condition you describe the rest of the Bass in, you have to wonder if the pickup still works. If there is a short or open in the coil, there will be either no signal or dramatically less signal out of the pickup. With a VOM (volt ohm meter) set to Resistance (~20K) you should see some resistance in the coil. If there is no movement in the needle (or digital readout), the pickup may be dead. On the P-Bass type split pickup you'll have to do this test on both coils. The way they are wired (one after the other) it is conceivable that one is bad and that would keep the pickup from making any noise.

Once you've determined that both coils have resistance, you could hook those directly up to a amp (without the vol/tone potentiometers) just to make sure you can hear that 'tapping' you suggested. In the grand scheme of Electra Guitar wiring, this one seems pretty straightforward, one pickup, one volume, one tone... some of the guitars get pretty crazy. Welcome aboard, good luck, and ask more questions if you're still pulling your hair out, Mike.

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That last diagram, I was wondering if I could just do that, because it seems much more straightforward than what I'm doing. For whatever reason, the closest diagram I could find was needlessly complicated. I'm going to try that, and if they still don't work, I'll just assume they're junk.

And nope, I don't have a volt/ohm meter, though it's probably something I should pick up.

yeah. the one I posted is the same as the one you found for the concord bass. pretty much any generic P-style bass with 1 vol, 1 tone will be wired the same...

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Difference is that that one works and the one for the concord didn't! Thanks guys, I look forward to playing this bad boy once I get it strung up.

Strung it up and adjusted the new bridge and all. Might have to mess with the truss rod, as the buzz is bad in a few spots.

But my big problem is that half of the pickup seems to be dead. Lower strings sound fine, but the D string is faint and G is inaudible. Which really sucks, cause I guess it means I'm going to have to destring and take it all apart to check the wiring again. Dead pickups are pretty rare, but it was stored pretty badly for about 30 years. The pickup looked fine upon visual inspection, but I guess I'll have to check if the bottom half somehow became demagnetized or something.

Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated, again.

I am restoring a '72 Longnecker that I bought at a pawnshop (it was all in a box). Trouble is it has 3 wires (Red, White, Black) coming out of the pickups. I pretty much know where the White and Black wires go, but where does the Red wire go to? Does anyone have a wiring diagram?