GFS Kwikplug

[Sovereign_13]

Alright, so there's plenty of information available on the GFS Kwikplug system, but seeing as my own GFS pickups arrived last night I figured I'd post something comprehensive-ish if anyone's curious or looking for info.  Especially since they're moving more and more toward having Kwikplug on all their pickups (sometimes without a traditional option).  And since there seems to be a fair amount of conflicting/misleading info out there.

Here's what I know about the four-wire-humbucker Kwikplug setup:

• GFS uses the same 4-wire color scheme as Seymour Duncan, they just run their pickups in a reversed configuration.  "South Start" is the "hot" wire, and it's green, although there's no reason you couldn't reverse the order.
• The Kwikplug system uses 2.5mm TRRS phone jacks (not the 3.5mm jack your headphones use)
• Hot/green on the pickup side goes to Tip on the plug and becomes the red wire on the harness side
• Red and white on the pickup side both go to Ring 1 and become the white wire on the harness side
• Black on the pickup side goes to Ring 2 and becomes the black wire on the harness side
• The cable shield on both sides go to Sleeve

In my opinion, this is kind of a dumb way to do things.  While I can see the advantages of a connectorized system, the way the pickup coils attach to the connector eliminates most of the switching options a four-wire humbucker is capable of.  With the coil ends permanently tied together, you're limited either to using the humbucker as a normal humbucker or shunting one coil to ground.  I'm not judging GFS for doing it this way, it's just not the way I would do it.  (I would have tied the shield and pickup ground wires together at the connector since they are always grounded together anyway).

As it stands, I'm going to have to modify the pickups a little bit to get access to all four wires on both ends.  I'm not sure if I'm going to just clip the connector and splice my own 4-wire cable on there, or if I should remove the pigtail in its entirety.  Regardless, hopefully this helps somebody somewhere if they're confused by the Kwikplug.

 

[dmraco]

The quickplugs I have used all had open wires at the control end.  If my memory is wrong, maybe I just cut off the connnector on the controll side.  The only connector was at the pickup junction.  I have wired them so you can tap the coils.  Theoretically you could swap out another 4 wire quick plug pick up just by plugging and unplugging, with no need to mess with the controls.

I have not done it at this point but may soon. 

Lately my favorite wiring scheme had been a P90 neck and humbucker in the bridge that can be tapped to single coil.  I use a single volume and tone that is push/pull.  I have grown very fond of the SLICK P90s...Juniors.  I find the other GFS p90s a bit flat

 

[Sovereign_13]

You're correct, there's only one connector pair.  Perhaps I've confused the issue - what you refer to as "control side" I call "harness" in my initial post.  But there are 4 wires + shield on the pickup side of the connector and 3 wires + shield on the control/harness side.  The coil "finish" wires are permanently joined at the connector junction, which allows for a coil-split (by shunting one coil to ground), but not series/parallel switching.

It just seems like an odd way of doing things to me when you could easily join the shield and pickup "ground" in the connector and not lose any of the series/parallel/coil splitting functions a four-conductor pickup usually offers.