Heit Deluxe wiring

Grizzleypappa · #1 September 21st, 2007

I have a Heit Deluxe that is quite old. It has 2 pickups, one at the neck and one at the center of the body. The situation I am running into is that each pup has 3 wires coming from it. I am not sure where each wire should go as I received it in disrepair. Can anyone help me out with this or even tell me where to get diagrams for the Heit. It is one of those Japan models that looks good but wasn't supposed to play good. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

allthumbs · #2 September 21st, 2007

try here..Guitarelectronics.com Inc. Guitar & Bass Wiring

Grizzleypappa · #3 September 21st, 2007

I took a look but all I found was either 2 wire or 4 wire diagrams. My dilemma is that I want to keep the guitar origional, using the old pickups. With three wires coming off I am not sure where they would go.

allthumbs · #4 September 21st, 2007

I asked a friend of mine who builds guitars. "I'm assuming you're talking about a humbucker pickup. If there are three wires on a pickup, one will be ground and the other two are most likely the ends of the coils. One of the wires will be the end of the first coil, and the other will be the end of both coils, the full output of the pickup.

You can tape off the wire for the first coil and just use two connections for a traditional humbucker, or use a switch to pick between one or the other for a coil tapped sound."

Does your axe have a coil tap switch or tap knob? If not than do what Steve said and tape off the single coil.

Grizzleypappa · #5 September 24th, 2007

outstanding, thanks, I am going to try that tonight and let you know what happens. I appreciate your help on this.

Dewy · #6 September 24th, 2007

Not sure how old the guitar is... or if this could be the case, but those could be "coil taps".

Consider that the pickup is a single coil, and halfway through the winding they tap into the wire for a half strength signal. You would have a choice (some sort of switch) for each pickup to either be half strength or full strength.

The other option could be as described above... the end of each coil wire, and a ground wire attached to the metal housing for grounding purposes.

Heit Rebuilder · #7 November 28th, 2007

on the neck p/u the green wire goes to gnd on the pot closest to the neck, the red wire goes to the top terminal of the neck switch, the black wire goes to top terminal of the bridge switch.

on the bridge p/u the green wire (thin) goes to the same gnd as the other p/u, the red wire goes to top terminal of the bridge switch (with the black wire of the neck p/u) the black wire goes to the same spot as the green wire (gnd on the pot)

Hope this helps, need more help, let me know

I'm currently rebuilding the same guitar, I found that it is very rare, so don't trash it. I don't know if it is worth anything, but they are impossible to find. I really like the shape of the body so I'm making a template so that I can duplicate the body shape. I'm building a new body for it out of ash to try to improve the sustain, I want to keep the rest original so that I can guage the improvement. Then I will probly restore the original body and use the ash body to build a standard scale guitar with a homemade Strat-copy neck and grizzly electronics.

the Heit Deluxe was only built from 1967-1970, I think that mine is a 1968, but I am not sure.

Good luck, Ed

Grizzleypappa · #8 November 29th, 2007

Wow, that helps a great deal. thanks. and I would love to know how the rebuild turns out. Maybe I can get some pics of this project when it is done cause it is a beautiful guitar.

Heit Rebuilder · #9 November 30th, 2007

I just found a matching Heit Bass guitar on EBAY got it for $65 plus shipping. saw a Kingston which is identical on ebay for $1500 !! hold on to that Heit, its is 10 times more rare than the Kingston! Email me at Hell2go@hughes.net and I'll try to send you some pics if I can figure out how to work that mail sending button! -- Ed