Pickup wiring

I have a problem with some pickups. I tried to replace the stock bridge pickup in my Ibanez SZ320MH with a DiMarzio Crunch Lab and it has been wired according to: http://www.dimarzio.com/sites/default/files/diagrams/SZ720.pdf . The pickup sounds weak and I'm sure there's a grounding problem, as when I touch the toggle switch I hear a loud 60hz hum. The instructions with the pickup say to solder together and tape up two particular wires, contradicting the above diagram which does show the exact electronics inside my SZ. The stock pickup had all its wires connected to something and they were the same colours as this one, but they were soldered in different places.

Now onto the next part: I have a similar problem with my RG which I've put a DiMarzio Evolution into, although the sound isn't weak and the contact hum is much quieter. I'm sure this has been wired according to DiMarzio's wiring diagram for this series.

At this point, I just want a pro to do the soldering and explain to me where I was going wrong. Do Walton's on George's Street offer this service?

Thanks.

balducci

The weak signal is a grounding problem, they're probably not 2 separate issues. Go with the wiring instructions for the pickup itself, the colour coding of pickup wires is not necessarily standard across different brands etc. Here's DiMarzio's instructions for their humbuckers

http://www.dimarzio.com/sites/default/files/diagrams/4Conductor.pdf

as the instructions say, put the relevant wires, of the new pickup, where the equivalent wires of the old pickup were. In other words, where the hot wire was, put the new hot wire - this does not necessarily mean put the new red wire where the old red wire was because the old red wire may not have represented the hot wire.

After writing all that it looks like the colour codes are the same

You probably have a bad solder joint. Hope that helps

wild turkey

Might be the solder
lead free solder can cause this to happen
had a similar problem a few years ago until a guitar tech friend told me

Elysian

The SZ320MH has a 3 way toggle switch with no coil tap, correct? If so the Dimarzio should be wired like this afaik:

Black & White wires should be soldered together and taped off with electrical tape.

The red (hot) wire should go on the 3 way toggle where the black & white wires from the original pickup were.

The green (ground) and bare wire should be soldered on top of the neck volume pot.

Hopefully that will work.