westone thunder 1 wiring help needed

[tribal2012]

Hi folks, i have installed two bare knuckle humbuckers (4 wire) but cannot get it to work properly as it was when it had the westone pups in ... any help would be hugely appreciated . i have attached the wiring diagram for the westone with the the original pick ups, just cant work out what goes where now there are a load more wires from the pups :( many thanks, Craig

[tribal2012]

also i have replaced the toggle switch with a new one which is not like the old westone one (which was a sealed unit and had three lugs on the back) the new one is one of these ...

[Kiichi]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Quick disclaimer: I am not an expert on wiring by any means, but I have switched out a few pubs and modded wiring, so I might be right, but donīt blame me if I am not.^^

With your new toggle I am going to assume that it just is a regular 3 lugged toggle.

Ok, now what I have derived from looking over your diagram and BKP ones I would say you would have to:

-Solder the black and bare wire to the back of the first tone pot (ground em)
-Solder the red wires to the pickup selector toggle. The wire going to the volume pot remains in the middle and the red wire each go to a sidelug
-Solder the green wire of each PU to the split switch. They replace the red ones in your diagram. Then the white wires from the PUs should just replace the white ones going to the tone pots in the diagram. (I think it is this way round, but you might need to switch the white and green around).

Hope that was understandable.
As far as I can see this that should get you the result you want (fairly certain of it).
Iīd say try it and get back with the results.

[tribal2012]

HIya Kiichi and thanks for the post bud :) i understand all that and sounds like a winner, the only bit i am a bit confused about is "
Solder the red wires to the pickup selector toggle. The wire going to the volume pot remains in the middle and the red wire each go to a sidelug"

the pick up selector toggle is way up on the top of the guitar (les paul style) so i dont have enough length wire wise to get there, or more likely i have misunderstood what you meant .. where abouts would the wires from the three lugs on the toggle go on the pots ? cheers bud, craig

[Kiichi]

Ah ok, that changes things a tiny bit.
I just had a look inside my own LP style axe to understand what you need to do. I have a different wiring, 2 vol, 1 tone, 3 way toggle (same as you) and I only exchanged the PUs and put in a push pull poti as tone for splits. With the that wiring I got some more wires flying around (and I am rather tired right now, its 4:00 here ), but found what I needed to know.

Anyway, back to buisiness: As you have noticed the wire from the PUs alone will not reach the toggle, they are only designed to go through the routing and into the main cavity where all the pots reside. From there one multicore, kinda like the one from the PUs (or just multiple smaller wires) should go up to the toggle. It should still be connected to the pots if you did not remove it. If you removed it, get it back or get a new one (or multiple smaller ones).

I do not know how the original PUs were connected to the toggle exactly, but effectivly you will have to wire the red wires from the PUs to one of the cores going to the toggle each (simple extension and donīt forget the insulating tape on those solder spots, donīt them shorting out touching pots) and those two then go each to one of the lugs on the side of the toggle.
When you have the lugs facing towards the edge of the guitar (outwards), the left lug (closest to the neck) is for the neck PU wire and the right one for the bridge.

 The middle two lugs of the toggle (the middle two already facing towards each other) should be connected and have a wire on them going back to the main cavitiy where it is connected to lug 3 of the volume poti (which is the poti on the left). This can be seen in you diagramm.

Finally on the toggle, oposite side of the lugs you will have to ground the toggle. That wire is connected to the inner most piece of that whole sandwhich architecture. That wire then also goes back to the main cavity and is soldered to the back of the first tone pot like the black and bare from the pots.

Cause all my talking is usually not that effective, here a pic which shows everything. Should multiply the understandabilitty of my words^^ http://www.guitarnucleus.com/gitschems/3way_LPtoggle.jpg

If anything else is unclear, go ahead and ask! I would not know half the stuff I know if I would not have asked a lot of (often stupid and simple) questions here. xD

[tribal2012]

Hi Kiichi, thanks for the reply mate. i have spent 3 hours today trying to do this but can i get it right, can i $%&# lol !!  now i have done a fair few mods in my time and always got there in the end, but this is doing my head in. i have tried pretty much every config (including your suggestions bud)and got no where. Fine getting all the pots to work etc but getting the coil tap switch to work is just not happening. I even tried another new switch in case the switch was duff but no go. If anyone could post a wiring diagram thats works i would be uber grateful !! thanks
Craig

[FELINEGUITARS]

Do you have a photo of the control cavity you can share with us?

[tribal2012]

hiya feline, thanks for the reply bud. The cavity is identical to the one in the pic at the top of my post. The bit that has really confused me is how to make it work going from a two wire (and an earth) humbucker to the 4 wire BK's. In principal i thought it would be straight forward, white and green together replacing the original red wire and then the BK red replacing the original white wire in the diagram. didnt work, nor did every config i have tried after that.  :(

[FELINEGUITARS]

Try this - see if itmakes sense
I wonder if you aren't getting the earth connections right?

[FELINEGUITARS]

Here it is as a picture link rather than as a filer - easier to see onscreen

[tribal2012]

Ah thanks loads for posting that bud. So i wired it exactly as your diagram and the Neck pup works fine and the coil tap switch works perfectly boosting it when flicked. Nothing at centre or bridge though. any ideas ? i have email BK support as well to see if they have any ideas ! Taaa Craig

[tribal2012]

hi folks, thanks again for your diagram feline. So heres the latest. almost there. i am wondering if the bridge pickup was wired wrong at the factory as the config below (red and green instead of white and green )are on the coil tap switch and white seems to to be the hot from the pup (so is on the bridge tone centre lug)... so now all pick ups are working correctly6 via the 3 way toggle, the coil tap switch works on the neck pup (and consequently the middle) but the sound is exactly the same on the bridge whatever way the coil switch is on .... weird ... so am i missing something strikingly obvious here or is the best i am going to get (would have been awesome to have the extra signal boost on the bridge pup for solos tho !!!) ... adjusted diagram attached,. thanks for all your help so far folks, very much appreciated :) Craig