

The Shield and the coils are not connected, but the Shield does connect to Ground. Its primary purpose is to trap radio frequencies that reach the pickup and shuttle them to Ground before they degrade your signal. The color that goes to each is called the pickup’s “Wiring Code.” Unfortunately, there is no standard Wiring Code, and it varies between manufacturers. Each coil has a positive and a negative wire. The four colored wires are called “conductor” wires because each of them carries current to and from the two coils in the humbucker.

It’s a high-output, versatile pickup that sounds very good in the Neck and Bridge positions. The SH-4JB is a humbucker that uses balanced coil configuration to produce improved harmonics with just the right blend of sustain and distortion. In the Seymour Duncan SH-4 JB wiring that we’ll be doing, the pickup is installed using four colored conductor wires and a bare wire.
