The Electra Forums

I want to try a gibson pickup with the vintage braided wire, do I just connect the braid and the hot where the white and the red are and disconnect the original grounding shield.

I better take some pics before I do any thing haha

Most pickups had just two leads, the ground and the hot. Starting in the 70's, some humbucking pups came with more than two leads. On many two conductor pups, the ground is just the braided shielding cover. Some humbuckers have three leads which allows for a coil cut. Some have four which allows for a coil cut and phase reversal.

It sounds like your guitar may be set up for a pup with three leads. The ground is still the ground and you can use either of the two hot leads for the other. You will loose the coil cut capability. Depending on which lead you use, and how the cut switch is wired, one position on the coil cut switch may turn the pup off. You can use jumper wires with alligator clips to try things out before you solder.

Thanks for the reply it's for a x 310 Mpc. With the five way switch both pickups have two wires and a shield. The original Gibson pick up has one wire and a shield

I'd leave it alone. Sounds like you'd lose some switching capability with the Gibson.

The MPC guitars dont have coil cut or coil phase reversal unless there are added micro switches on the guitar. The five way does not do any coil tapping and I dont like position one and five any way but since the extra wire is just a ground shield you dont lose those positions.

Tonight I had it wired up with a Gibson in the neck and it sounded great, but broke two strings getting the pickup back out since the wire was caught under neigh it, so I decided to replace the bridge pickup and had that wired in and working and all five positions worked. Then putting back the five way with the extra space these wires need I broke the switch. Oh [Foul Language Used]. Think I managed to glue it back together but Im not going to bother since I didnt like position 1 or 5 any way. From the little I was able to try it, these stock gibson pickups 490R 498T are going to smoke the originals.

if i just left it alone i would have sold it because the pickups were so bad

really appreciate the thorny pod now WOW

Im liking my 310 more than the les paul special with hb's I have (which has Duncan antiquities) now that I got a set of 490/498 gibson in the 310 guitar. Original pickups are going on ebay along with the repaired five way switch unless some one here wants them.

I like the stock pups in my X330. I had Gibson 490R and 490T in a Faded SG and was unimpressed. It's funny how same model guitars can sometimes sound so different. I've found some really cheap pups that sound good and some $150 pups that sound bad. Undortunately you never really know how a given pickup will sound in a given guitar until you mount them and try them. I'm glad you found a pair that make you happy. Do you think the Electra pups may have been a little overwound for your taste? Did you measure their ohms? Just curious...

That's the weird part even though the ohms aren't that high they definitely sound like very hot pick ups. Neck it is 8 ohms and the bridge is 8.4 ohms. The Gibsons measure 7.4 and 12.5 but even that bridge pick up doesn't sound as distorted as the original Electra. More useful then that is the fact that the Gibsons are just overall clearer more detailed musical pick ups. You're right about expensive versus cheap pickups because I have a set of antiquities in a Gibson Les Paul special that are not special at all. They sound very clean but not much overtones and rather low sustain, somewhat lacking in bass but plenty of treble. The Gibsons just seem to have an overall good balance. I'm going to buy a second set for the special. I'm just about as disappointed in me antiquities as the Electras.

Position 5 is both pickups out of phase, check out the Outlaw video below for a demonstration. I am not convinced the micro switches we see on some Vulcans came from the Factory that way. If you do need a coil cut option, try the Treble/Bass expander module which does a pretty fair estimation of a Single Coil pickup set at about seven. Cheers, Mike.

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Electra Guitar Videos ===> http://www.youtube.com/user/mjm33mjm?feature=watch

Yes out of phase from one pickup to the other.

I would like to get that module and a tank tone, my point is the five way does not give you single coil splitting. Ive seen the micro switches on 300 series mpc's that to me wiring looks factory. I dont really need single coil and both pickups on now has close to a single coil acoustic sound. Im very happy with the choice of changing the pickups, I may try to put the five way back it at some point.

If you like the traditional 3 way selector, the X960 Ultima, X120 Leslie West and X930 'Dickie Betts' Dot-Neck Vulcan were MPC guitars that didn't come with the Tone Spectrum Rotary setup. They probably didn't make a lot of Leslie West models, but they seem to come up pretty regularly. Here's my pair:



I like the three way, it's more familiar feeling. If I need a single coil sound, well I've got lots of other axe's on the wall to grab!

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Electra Guitar Videos ===> http://www.youtube.com/user/mjm33mjm?feature=watch

Very very nice like the brown deluxe more! I dont see either of these much. Here are some pics of my 310's neck pic up.
Very different construction from traditional humbuckers!

I will be changing the covers to gold when another set of 490/498 comes in this week