Rewiring the MMK45s in a Thunder 1

Picked up this project Thunder 1A recently and need a bit of advice about wiring.

the active circuit in this guitar has long gone, as has the switch for it, so I am going to wire it up for passive operation.

I am also going to miss out wiring it with coil-taps/phase stuff too.

My plan is to wire the two MMKs to a three way switch, both full throttle and have a volume for each plus a master tone control.

So what I need to know, is which is the full output wire from an MMK45? They both have brown outer cable covering, one pickup has a red, white and green wire, the other has just a red and white one.

Also is there a diagram for a guitar with 3 way toggle, volume each and a master tone? Was thinking that Gibson wired their Flying V this way, so I might take a look at that.

Would love some help on this one, thanks

And I promise pics when its done

Sollophonic

here is a diagram for your V/V/T set up
http://www.guitarelectronics.com/product/WD2HH3T21_00/Guitar-Wiring-Diagam-2-Humbuckers3-Way-Toggle-Switch2-Volumes1-Tone.html

here is a wiring diagram for a dynasty to show wire colors on the pickups. the one with 3 wires will be the bridge pup and the 2 wires will be the neck. on the bridge pup, just insulate the end of the red wire and tuck it away.

http://www.westoneguitars.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Dynasty-Guitar-Wiring.jpg

I found this really useful for unknown pickups. Some really great stuff on the site

http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/pickupwiring.htm

Hope this is of some use.

So do I just use the white wire on the bridge and wire the green and red together, and on the neck do I use the white and wire the red to earth or do I insulate it?

Printed out the 2vol/tone diagram thanks

you will need to connect one end of each pickup to ground, (say the white wire from each pickup), and one end to it's volume pot.

for the bridge pickup, you can put tape over the end of the red wire and no connection to anything (that wire should be the center-tap of the humbucker, which you don't need). the green wire connects to the volume pot.

for the neck pickup you have white to ground and red to volume pot.

what kind of switch are you using, 3-way box-type switch or mini-switch?

I'm using a box type 3 way toggle to switch twixt pickups.

I'll give it a go tomorrow, plus adding the new Gotoh bridge.

Just levelled the frets a bit, not sure how it will play.

Pickups are definately MMK45s though, just checked baseplates.

Should sound awesome (fingers crossed)

Well, I got the two MMKs wired up and it all seems to work, though the two volumes ultimately turn each other off at their backmost setting. next job is to put the new Gotoh bridge on, and a new nut and string it all up and see if it plays OK.

Plan on putting a brass nut on for real 80s authenticity

I'll post pics of this battered, but ultimately unbowed axe soon.

Sollophonic wrote:Well, I got the two MMKs wired up and it all seems to work, though the two volumes ultimately turn each other off at their backmost setting.

glad to hear you got things working. you can fix the problem with the volume pots by changing the connections.

one end of the volume pot connects to ground.
the other end connects to the output.
the center point (wiper) connects to the pickup.

this configuration will 'ground' the pickup to cut off the sound to only that pickup.

if the output is connected to the center point on the volume pot, at minimum setting the output is grounded and all signals are cut off.

Wired up and sounded OK to me.

I got it like this




And with a bit of work made it look and sound like this