changing your pickups is surprisingly easy and once you get the hang of it it doesn't take much longer than changing your strings there's no absolute best method but here I'll show you one technique that's especially fast and easy let me show you some of the tools you'll need first of all a soldering iron whether it's this fancy kind with adjustable temperature or just your basic pencil type iron but in any case don't use one of those big gun type irons because that's too much power for fine electronic work you'll need a tool to clip wire and one to strip wire you'll need small screwdrivers both regular and Phillips head an electric screwdriver is great if you have one but if not the old-fashioned kind will get the job done you'll need a small pliers to grab hot wires or work them through tight places and a little bit of electrical tape it's also a good idea to have on and a roll of painters tape which is like masking tape but less sticky and your cell phone so you can make a record of your work as you proceed and finally some bath towels to protect your work area in your guitar now soldering can be dangerous and you shouldn't proceed unless you're comfortable with the tools you can find some really good soldering tutorials online just go to youtube and type in a desaad er electronics will also review a couple of basics as we proceed a good starting point is to download a wiring diagram appropriate for your guitar in your pickups just go to Seymour Duncan comm click on support' and then wiring diagrams in this demo I'll be replacing the bridge pickup in the dual humbucker guitar with two volume controls one tone control and a 3-way switch so I'll choose that option you know a lot of times you can do the job without a wiring diagram especially if you just swapping pickups without altering the electronics or doing any fancy wiring tricks like phase switching or coil tapping here we just want to exchange one pickup for another so we'll be opening up the guitar seeing where the old pickup connects disconnecting it installing the new pickup and making the same connections with the new wires it should go pretty fast now before we start soldering a few words about the two type of pickup connections you're likely to encounter vintage pickups and vintage style pickups use what's called single connector wire this type of wire has a messy outer coating that gets connected to ground usually by being soldered to the back of one of the pots there's also an inner wire usually inside a layer of black insulation that carries the hot connection and it usually connects to one of the lugs of your volume pots the pickup we're removing is this type by the way they call it hot just because it carries the signal from the pickups but it doesn't get physically hot unless you eat it with the soldering iron and it will never shock you so don't worry about that the other type of wire is called for connector and it's more common in modern pickups it's not necessarily any harder to work with it's just different it looks like a single black wire but when you strip it back you see that it actually contains five wires inside black white red and green and a bare unshielded one there's also this foil wrap that you don't use you can just snip that away the pickle we'll be installing as this type of connections the extra wires by the way are for doing things like coil taps and phase switching which we won't be doing in this tutorial we'll just be connecting it the same way the single connector pickup is connected now one important thing these color codes are not Universal in this demo we'll be working with Seymour Duncan pickups and their unique color codes if you're using this lesson to install pickups from another manufacturer it'll still be either single connector or four connector but the color code may be different so definitely check the manufacturers website for the codes before you proceed now assuming you are working with a Seymour Duncan pick up the color codes work like this the black wire carries the hot signal from your pickups and it will get connected to one of the pot lugs the green and bare wires at the ground signal and they're going to get soldered to the back of one of pots and the red and white wires are used for advanced wiring like phase switching and coil tapping and we won't be using them we'll be braiding them together and taping them off now while we're on the subject let's go ahead and prep the wires for the pickup we're going to be installing I'm stripping away the outer shielding with my wire stripper and I can see that there's five different wires in there four of them are shielded and I'm going to use the wire stripper to strip away the shielding from those four the red one black one white one and the green one now I'm going to braid together the white and red wires and I'm going to solder them together just as a reminder when you're soldering you generally don't touch the solder directly to the iron use the iron to heat the area to be soldered and then touch the solder to the surface once it's hot enough okay I've got the white and red connected now I'm going to braid together the green and bare wires and solder them together the same way heat it up for a second touch the solder to the hot wire there we go and even though I'm not yet connecting the black wire to anything I'm also going to apply a thin coat of solder to that wire that process is called tinning and that thin coat of solder makes the wire easier to work with and more likely to adhere to whatever service we're trying to attach it to finally I'm going to get a little strip of black electrical tape and seal off the red and white wires which we won't be using and there's our two working connections the green ground wire and the black hot wire I've already placed a bath towel over my work surface I've taken a second towel and wrap it up like a pillow and that's going to make a neck rest for my guitar it's going to give me a nice stable working surface okay we're going to have to remove the strings if you want to use this opportunity to change your strings just snip them off with the wire clipper if you want to reuse your strings work them free from the tuning posts if you have a Les Paul type guitar be prepared for the fact that the bridge and the tail piece may be attached by nothing more than the pressure of the strings so grab them and put them somewhere safe so they don't scratch your guitar turn your guitar over and use your screwdriver to remove the control cavity cover keep on hand a little dish that stole all the little parts or just use the little plastic box your pickups came in there are six screws on the pickup mounting ring for now let's remove the four Phillips head screws in the corner these are the ones that secure the mounting ring to the body gently work it loose from the body and then turn the guitar over so you can look into the control cavity if you haven't already done so now is a great time to snap a picture of the before electronics now gently tug the pickup to identify its wire okay now I can see that the hot wire is connected to one of the lugs of this middle volume pots of the bridge volume pot and its outer mesh is soldered to the back of the pot I'll unsolder the hot connection by touching the soldering iron to the lug here I'm able to work it free just using the tip of the iron but in general it's a good idea to grip the wire with a little pliers so you don't burn yourself it might take a little longer to melt the solder on the back of the pot especially if you don't have a fancy soldering iron with adjustable temperature just be patient you may have to hold the iron there for 30 seconds or so before it comes loose now the pickups ready to remove but before we take it out let's make a note of its orientation humbucker pickups are usually oriented screws out neck pickup screws face the neck bridge pickup screws face the bridge also note that the mounting ring isn't symmetrical it's fatter on one side I'm going to use a little strip of painters tape to mark the bridge facing side of the pickup so I don't get mixed up later this is also probably good time for another cellphone picture new pickups generally come with screws and springs but not new mounting rings so in most cases you'll want to remove the pickup from the old mounting ring and replace it with the new one check out the assembly here's to pickup with its brackets there's a plastic mounting ring and two long screws inside Springs now this can be one of the trickier parts of changing pickups especially the first time namely removing the springs and screws without having the springs go flying across the room cup the whole assembly in your hand and work the remaining two screws loose with a regular head screwdriver now use your fingertips to compress the spring exposing the bare end of the screw position the new pickups bracket over the screw and hold it in place and then screw it in the exact amount you screw it it doesn't really matter we'll be adjusting it later just enough to hold everything together for now now this sort of pickup with no cover displays both the slugs and the screws but like we said before the screws will face towards the bridge so make sure that the screws are oriented towards the bridge side of the pickup mounting ring now install the screw on the other side of the bracket and we're ready to look pick up work the wires through the hole that leads to the control cavity and position the pickup triple-checking the orientation of the screws turn it over pull the wire through now you can screw the new pickup in using either the screws you saved or the new ones that came with your pickup now we're going to work the tinned tip of that black wire through the log of the volume pot eight the lug with the tip of the soldering iron thread the black wire through it making sure it's not touching any other connections let it set for a second and now all we have to do is connect the ground wire to the back of the pot again be patient here it may take a while to get it up to adequate heat now as you can tell from looking at this guitar I've done a lot of pickup changes in here and it's kind of a mess but I've got this little blob of solder left from my previous installs and I'm just going to melt that till it's a nice runny pool and then put the wire in now I suggest you don't follow my dumbass example here and use the pliers to hold the wire instead of your bare fingers there looks nice and runny press it into place let it set for a sec and there it looks good we're all set if I wanted to be a little bit neater I could have trimmed this wire shorter sometimes I leave a little bit of extra wire because I might want to reuse the pickup on another guitar where it needs a little bit more wire run you can always just tie everything off with a little cable tie to keep it neat having a few extra inches on the wire has no sonic consequences whatsoever and just to be super clear here's an annotated picture of what we just did black wire to the lug ground wire to the back of the pot red and white taped off and now it's time to check the connection I'm going to plug in the guitar make sure I've got the proper pickup selected I'm going to very lightly tap the pull pieces with the screwdriver and verify that it's getting kind out of them while I'm at it I'm going to lower the bridge volume pot make sure it's working correctly there we go as we want to hear if everything's working as expected restring and adjust the pickup height here's one good technique press your string down at the highest fret and raise the pole pieces till they almost but don't quite touch the string that'll give you a good starting point and from there you can adjust the taste do the same on the treble side now if you don't hear a sound when you tack the pickup you need to recheck the connection of that hot black wire if you do hear a sound but with more buzzing than you're used to then you probably have a problem with your ground wire connection now if you're stuck at this point remember help is waiting during West Coast business hours you can call Seymour Duncan tech support the product experts our smart patient cool and eager to help you you can also get info 24/7 on the Seymour Duncan users forum just go to Seymour Duncan comm and click for him don't be shy about asking beginners questions everybody here was a beginner at some point and they're very eager to help well I hope you found these instructions helpful and I hope you enjoy your new pickup you