G&L Dual blade/power blade pickup hum :(

[roey]

Hi all,

I recently purchased 2 new pickups for my G&L Legacy special to replace 2 dead ones.
1 Dual blade and 1 power blade .

I placed them into the guitar using the official G&L Schematics for the Legacy Special.
The new power blade in the bridge, the new dual blade in the neck.
The old pickup (the only one that didn't die) went in the middle.

Now both new pickups (in the neck and bridge positions) have a hum, while the old one does not.
The weird thing is, they're both wired in the same, and they look and feel the same.

What could be causing this? what can I do about it?

Thanks
Roey

[Craig]

Hi all,

I recently purchased 2 new pickups for my G&L Legacy special to replace 2 dead ones.
1 Dual blade and 1 power blade .

I placed them into the guitar using the official G&L Schematics for the Legacy Special.
The new power blade in the bridge, the new dual blade in the neck.
The old pickup (the only one that didn't die) went in the middle.

Now both new pickups (in the neck and bridge positions) have a hum, while the old one does not.
The weird thing is, they're both wired in the same, and they look and feel the same.

What could be causing this? what can I do about it?

Thanks
Roey

Perhaps you have a cold solder joint on the ground wires of the new pickups. Try re-soldering them.
Did you snip the white wire on the neck pickup and the blue wire on the bridge pickup?
Also, make sure the ground wire to the tram claw has a good connection.



Hope this helps.

[roey]

Hi,

It seems the *new* Dual blade and Power Blade pickups are very different to the older model!
They look different - they are completely black (eg. the magnets on the front are black instead of silver),
and they have 4 wires, instead of 3 - a green, a red, a black , and a white wire, and the way of hooking them up is different as well!

The correct way of hooking them up is :

Red and white wires connected to each other and to the toggle switch.
Black connected to volume pot,
Green to ground.

Any other way , there would be a terrible 60hz hum!

I think this post should also go sticky, since it might help people who buy these new pickups for their old G&Ls.

Roey.

[Craig]

Hi,

It seems the *new* Dual blade and Power Blade pickups are very different to the older model!
They look different - they are completely black (eg. the magnets on the front are black instead of silver),
and they have 4 wires, instead of 3 - a green, a red, a black , and a white wire, and the way of hooking them up is different as well!

The correct way of hooking them up is :

Red and white wires connected to each other and to the toggle switch.
Black connected to volume pot,
Green to ground.

Any other way , there would be a terrible 60hz hum!

I think this post should also go sticky, since it might help people who buy these new pickups for their old G&Ls.

Roey.

Are you sure you got the pickups for the USA G&L Legacy Special?

Perhaps you got the dual rail pickups (neck and middle pickups) which were used in the 2010 Tribute Legacy HB.
Here's the wiring diagram for the Tribute Legacy HB which we have in the Gallery:



Here is what the 2010 Tribute Legacy HB looked like:



Who sold you those pickups?

[Craig]

See this post: Re: New Dual blade pickups are different than old ones!

[Ric4001]

I just bought a mid to late 90s era Legacy Special with what appear to be original blade pickups. Mine has 60 cycle hum in all positions except the bridge only. Trying to trouble shoot this. Mine is wired exactly like is shown in the Legacy Special schematic drawing on G&L's site (where the hot wire goes from switch to volume, and then fans out to the tone knobs, and the bass knob connects to the output jack), but I noticed the picture Craig posted above has the hot wire going first to the treble knob, then the bass knob and then the volume knob, and then from the volume to the output. I thought I would first try re-soldering everything to the normal configuration to check for cold solder joints, but which is the normal configuration? Thanks for any help.