How to add a tone control to a Rare Earth humbucking acoustic pickup?

Hi!

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The best source of wiring schematics is the Seymour Duncan site. Here's the link-

Wiring Diagrams

What you describe sounds like pickups fighting against each other meaning, does this occur when using pickups individually or together? This is normal when using more than one pickup together, if it occurs in single mode, something is wired wrong. Another thing is, If using single, are you splitting coils? Individual coils wired wrong can do this, a bad pickup selector switch can also. A loose wire or fiber touching the tone pot capacitor or ground could also. A dead coil on a humbucker can as well. I'm guessing that you are using these in combo meaning a possible pickup selector switch may not be switching properly. The player's level of experience is also in my mind since, all of my guitars do the exact same ONLY when I use more than one pickup. I hardly ever use more than one at a time unless I'm playing a strat.

> There are plenty of ways to wire this guitar...check out wiring diagram 2 humbuckers 2 volume 1 tone 3 way switch Google Search

Did you solder the wires to your plug well?
Did you place the pickup as in the manual?
Did you connect it to the preamp?

Usually the pickups for acoustic guitar need preamps to work with guitar amplifiers because the signal they produce is low.

You have several options:

1. Do nothing and live with the occasional problem.

2. Check your guitar cable and the battery connections for loose or intermittent connections/noise. Try to see if it's the amp responsible for the noise....ie, Is it caused by vibrations, or maybe static....especially in winter when it's dry. Your home power may have noise on the line, so borrow or rent a power conditioner which filters out noise. If that fails, go to 3.

3. Bite the bullet and pay a competent guitar tech/luthier to repair it. Most of these issues are due to loose/faulty connections. Should be less than an hour. Hey....It's a Martin.

3a. Pay a guitar tech to loosen the end pin connector so you can see if you can repair it yourself.

Check first it is not hitting or touching the next few frets, in case they are high. Or maybe the 5th fret is low. You could raise the action and/or adjust the neck relief to test this.

If it is not a fret problem, it may be a real dead spot on your bass. If so, it would be regardless of the pickup used and could be heard acoustically if you could hear notes that low easily. Most guitars have notes on the fretboard somwhere that are a little dead. It is due to destructive interference and there is not much that can be done. To happen at the 5th fret is unusual though. Make sure the string is wound properly around the head, and that nothing is loose and actually moving/buzzing when you play the note.
Other causes can be a loose fret, loose bridge parts or a loose neck joint.

For one volume and tone pot, it would be like this

http://www.guitar-mod.com/wiring/LP_junior.gif

All the earths have to eventually terminate on the earth of the cord.

Most likely problem is failing battery. Note that batteries have a habit of recovering when idle for a bit. Leaving guitar cable plugged in drains the battery as the presence of the cable is what turns on the preamp.

If you have a volt ohm meter, try unsoldering one lead from the pickup in question making careful note of where it was unsoldered from. Use one probe on the other wire or wire that aren't unsoldered from that pickup. Use the other probe on the end of the wire you unsoldered with the volt/ohm meter set to a setting which can cope with between 3 and 14 k. Generally the resistance will read between 3k and 14k. A shorted pickup will read considerably less but there will still be a reading. If your pickup is dead there are 2 possibilities. One is that a winding in the pickup is burnes out or broken and you will get no reading with the resistance test. The other which is rare but not impossible is that the magnet in the pickup has lost its flux which means that you could have weak to no sound. There are other possibilities such as your pickup being adjusted to low to sense the strings. If none of this helps if you can, try www.seymourduncan.com.There are wiring diagrams and lots of good info on this site.