Railhammer Alnico Grande Wiring Diagram

Let’s take a look at how to install Railhammer Alnico Grande pickups. As you’ll see in the wiring diagram, Railhammer pickups are quite unusual: half of the humbucker features rail-style blades, and the other half features standard posts.

Installing these pickups is quite simple and only requires soldering a few connections. Most people will be replacing stock pickups to upgrade to the Railhammer Alnico Grandes, so most of the work is already done. We’ll provide you with a few diagrams that will help you get started, along with some information on the components that go with your pickups.

Railhammer Alnico Grande Wiring Code

To install any pickup, all you need is the wiring code. Humbuckers usually have four colored wires and one bare one. Two of the colored wires are twisted together and taped off. One of the remaining wires is the Hot, and the other is twisted together with the bare wire to become the Ground.

The Railhammer Alnico Grande pickup wiring code is as follows:

• Black = Hot
• Red + White = soldered together and taped off
• Green + Bare/Braided silver = Ground

We have illustrated this wiring code for you in Example 1

Example 1

Railhammer Alnico Grande Wiring Diagram

To install your Railhammer Alnico Grande pickups, first, remove your old pickup, but remember where the wires go. It’s not important what color the wires on your old pickup are. The Ground wire will be the one that is going to the back of the volume pot. The Hot wire is the other one, and it should be going to one of the lugs on the volume pot, or to a pickup selector switch.

Install the Railhammer Alnico Grande pickups the same way as the old ones. The Ground will go to the back of the volume pot, while the Hot will go wherever the old one did.

Les Paul-Style

In Example 2, we show you a Railhammer Alnico Grande wiring diagram of how you might install these pickups into a Les Paul-style guitar with two humbuckers and a three-way switch.

Example 2

Super Strat-Style

In Example 3, we show you a Railhammer Alnico Grande wiring diagram of how you might install these pickups into a Strat-style guitar that mixes single-coil pickups with a humbucker. These guitars use a five-way switch.

Example 3

Components

While you are installing your new Railhammer Alnico Grande pickups, it might be a good idea to look at the other components to check that they match up with Railhammer’s suggestions and guidelines.

• Railhammer recommends using 500k pots with these pickups.
• Railhammer recommends .022uf capacitors on the tone control.

If your guitar is fairly modern, there is a good chance that these components are already in your guitar, and you don’t have to take any further steps. If you like to tinker, you can give your Railhammer Alnico Grande pickups a brighter sound by using a higher value pot. If you feel that turning down your tone control makes the sound too muddy, try using a smaller value capacitor. You can use a value as low as .01uf for a more gradual effect as you turn down the tone.

Conclusion

As you can see, installing new pickups is not very difficult, and experienced techs can have the job finished in a few minutes. We recommend swapping out pots and capacitors because it’s easy to do, and it’s an excellent way to improve and personalize your tone.

If you have enjoyed reading over this guide and have learned how to install these unique pickups, please feel free to share this Railhammer Alnico Grande wiring diagram on Facebook and Twitter. For more articles on guitar electronics, visit humbuckersoup.com.