Can someone help me with my pickups?

RifferMcDuck

RifferMcDuck

Inspired
So I'm still trying to figure out wtf is wrong with the wiring of one of my guitars, or the pickups themselves.

They're the Bare Knuckle Juggernauts, and my issue is that they are frustratingly weak. For comparison, my main bridge pickup I use is the Seymour Duncan Pegasus. The Pegasus has a DCR of 12.6k, compared to the Juggernaut bridge's 13.3k, yet, while being at the same height and in the same model guitar, I have to set the AFXIII input at about 50% for the Pegasus, but 100% for the Juggernaut. Then, when I use just about any preset with the Juggernaut, I have to boost the input trim up 2.0+ to match the gain at all. It's a pain to work with high gain tones on these, because the gain needs to be absolutely cranked on just about any amp model I use.

A while back, this issue was compounded with a disturbing lack of high end, and I took it to my local tech multiple times who couldn't find anything wrong. Eventually, I discovered on my own that they had left in the 25k pots from the EMGs that came in the guitar, and never even thought to check. So now I don't trust them at all.

I've reached out to BKP already, and they said the Juggernauts are their highest gain pickups (I'm not sure what that meant, since they're certainly not their highest output set), so this shouldn't be an issue, but I'm hesitant to pay the money to have them removed and shipped overseas just to find out it was something wrong on my end. I've already checked the output jack and the wiring inside, and can't find anything disconnected, but I don't have the tools or experience to do anything more.

So now I'm kind of stuck. I eventually want to sell this guitar, but don't want to sell it unless I know that it's in good working order.
Any advice? Anyone else have these?
 
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are the proper wires connected in the proper places? many pickup manufactors use different wire colors. I would try connecting the pick up straight to the jack and see what happens
 
secondwindow said:
Could be. If so, then tapping on the pole pieces, with something conductive like an allen wrench, would reveal if only one side isn't working.
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So I just did this, and nothing seems to be amiss. Am I just looking for the same sound on either side of the pickup when tapping it?
 
As someone mentioned earlier, find the wiring code for Bareknuckle and double-check your wiring. You could also desolder the pickup and check it's resistance. Years ago I couldn't understand why one pickup I had sounded so different than others of the same model...turned out one of the coils was going bad.
 
warlockII said:
As someone mentioned earlier, find the wiring code for Bareknuckle and double-check your wiring. You could also desolder the pickup and check it's resistance. Years ago I couldn't understand why one pickup I had sounded so different than others of the same model...turned out one of the coils was going bad.
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The wiring looked fine from what I could tell, that's how I discovered they had left in the 25k pot, but I might check through it again just to make sure. I have zero experience with soldering, so I'll have to take it into a another tech, but checking the actual resistance was going to be my next step. It would be very upsetting if it was the pickup itself, as BKP aren't known for poor quality assurance.
 
JoKeR III said:
Without seeing the wiring, it sounds like your BKP's are wired parallel instead of series. A tech that presumes to know the wire code could easily make this mistake.
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This. If you tap on the pole pieces of both coils and they sound about the same, but the pickup sounds weak and bright, odds are good that the humbucker is wired in parallel instead of series. Pickup manufacturers don't all use the same color coding for their wiring, so that's worth triple-checking.
 
Post some pictures, it sounds like they are wired up wrong. Remember that DC resistance is a poor indicator of output gain. It takes no account of wire thickness or strength of or even size of the magnet.
Tim at BKP is as good as it gets.
Anyone that could wire this up with the EMG harness is incompetent so you need to go elsewhere .
 
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You can see from this diagram that they don't use the same colour code as Duncans in spite of the same colour wires.
2_hum_1vol_1tone_3way_40da0c6.pdf
The whole thing should be rewired using 500k CTS log (audio) pots and switchcraft Jack and switch (CRL or oak Grigsby if strat style ) 0.022 MFD caps PIO is better whatever people say . Use screened cable for the main output and don't waist time or money on copper tape it it is not needed if everything else is done properly.
 
Wow, didn't expect any more comments to come in, thanks for the replies everyone.

I'm going to post pictures of the wiring when I get a chance today, hopefully that might help, but I'm still trying to hunt down a new tech in the area who can hopefully really look them over.

As a reminder, they work, and don't sound altogether super weird or anything, but the output is just way, way too weak compared to my other pickups of similar resistance. Like, I have to keep them right up next to the strings, or otherwise 100% Axe input isn't enough to tickle red. It just doesn't seem right to me, I have to fight to get reasonable gain in every preset, otherwise they sound like active pickups with a dead battery. It's so weird.
 
JoKeR III said:
Without seeing the wiring, it sounds like your BKP's are wired parallel instead of series. A tech that presumes to know the wire code could easily make this mistake.
Click to expand...

Would this make them sound weird at all? I wouldn't be surprised, but as I said in my previous comment, they don't necessarily sound wrong, it's mostly their weakness that makes them difficult to play with. They're like an active pickup with a super dead battery, everything on every preset just needs to be totally cranked.
 
Parallel coils sound quite different than series. They are more scooped and bright sounding with much lower output.

For Bare Knuckes, the Green and White are tied together for series wiring. Red is hot and Black is ground.

For Duncans, the Red and White are tied together for Series wiring. Black is hot and Green is ground.
 
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