Testing Humbucker Power At Your Guitars Output Jack

Here's a fast way to accurately measure the output of your prized humbucker guitar pickup. With this method we demonstrate that there is some loss of humbucker power once its wired into your 1980s shredder guitar.

My Marshall Plexi Amp and my live rig responds best when my humbucker delivers 13.5 ohms DC resistance. Heres is how I test every one of my performing guitars to make sure my guitar produces the power i need for Hard Rock and 80s Metal.

FACTS

• i’m not using technical terms in this post only Laymans Wordage. Your humbucker pickup puts out a certain amount of what I choose to call “humbucker power” for this demonstration ( although humbucker power is an incorrect term - DC resistance is the correct term ).

• ANY time you install a humbucker into your guitar the wiring, volume control, tone pots or anything in between your amps input and the humbucker causes you to lose “humbucker power”.

• This method tests the “humbucker power” output at the almighty output jack where it counts. Power that arrives to the output jack after all the rubbish usually stuffed into every guitar such as tone pots, switches, capacitors, poor quality wires, etc.

Step One ;

Turn the guitar's pickup selector switch to activate the bridge humbucker pickup, turn the volume pot all the way up. ( If you have other switches in the guitar, tone pots or other, deactivate them ).

Step Two:

Pop out the input jack plate and expose the negative and positive wire to the input/output jack. ( see photo )

…and then contact one meter probe to the tip of the exposed positive wire and the other to the negative wire.

You've now completed a circuit and by turning your multimeter to the expected resistance range ( I use the 20K range setting on my cheapo meter), you'll be able to read the pickup's resistance or “humbucker power”actually arriving to the input jack.

In the photo I’m getting 14.88 ohms right there at the output jack.

Our AXN Guitar which has basically only a single humbucker and a single 500k Bourns volume pot is showing a .83 ohm loss of “humbucker power” at the output jack.

The AXN humbucker showed 15.71 ohms of Humbucker Power at installation. So that demonstrates the lost of power before the signal even reaches the amplifier.

Marty Friedman signature Ibanez MFM2

• The only way to get full “humbucker power” from your prized pickup without loss is to wire your single humbucker pickup directly to the output jack. This would require that NO volume pot and NOTHING else to be in the chain between the humbucker and the output jack. Of course having no volume pot is not a preference and not an option for any guitar player that i know...

  Except for Marty Friedman with his https://ibanez.fandom.com/wiki/MFM2

• Even I like to have a volume knob on my single humbucker guitars and a treble bleed soldered to the volume pot so i can roll-off the volume for clean sounds Ala Queensryche clean tones… and keep the EQ of my Humbucker that I love so much.

  There is A Way… There is a method to install a 2-position toggle switch with a single volume single humbucker guitar that allows the following :

  Position-1 on the toggle = the humbucker pickup wired directly to the output jack.

  Position-2 on the toggle = All the guitars wiring with the volume pot ( and whatever else you desire in the wiring chain ) between the humbucker and the output jack. This is basically Allan Holdsworth wiring which I shall demonstrate in my next 80’s Guitar Blog post.

  … Heres a photo of Allan Holdsworth’s Charvel Jackson Guitar which in my opinion has the perfect Metal Hard Rock wiring scenario.

  Its an unknown wiring scheme originated with Mr. Grover Jackson. One position on Allan’s 3-way toggle provides virtually direct wiring from the humbucker pickup to the output jack overriding the volume and tone knobs.

  The position of FULL VOLUME and FULL HUMBUCKER POWER that overrides the volume pot i really like a lot. I sometimes accidentally have my volume pot set wrong at a gig when im bouncing off the walls and the Holdsworth wiring solves that for me. The Holdsworth setup takes a little getting used to but it works perfect for hard 1980s rock-n-roll !!

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