Kwikplug

If you’re into to cheap guitar parts you have probably heard of GuitarFetish.com. If not you should check it out. They sell an array of pickups that are cheap and get good reviews. I’v tried a couple of these and they sound good to me.

They also offer a feature called Kwikplug. Kwikplug is a jack that you attach to the back of a pickup. It allows you to connect the pickup to your guitar by plugging it in. This makes pickup changes quick and easy.

I had this old Duncan Invader with a cable that was too short. I added a Kwikplug connector to it!

I got this Seymour Duncan Invader on Reverb, or eBay used. I forget the cost. It was reasonable, new Invaders go for $100 or more! I have since moved over to cheap no-name pickups! More on this in a future post!

Kwikplug comes with wire with a plug at one end, and a small PCB assembly mounted on a metal plate with a plastic cover.

I identified a good location to mount the Kwikplug. Checked the wiring diagram here. Look like they just remove all of the original cable and just run the skinny wires to the Kwikplug PCB.

This means that the red and white wires from a humbucker, this would be north finish (white wire for Duncan humbuckers) and the south finish (red wire for Duncan humbuckers) are soldered together and come out of Kwikplug cable as a single wire. I’m not an expert but, it seems like this allows you to still split the coils and wire them for series and parallel.

I trimmed the wires off and cut them to length, soldered them to the board, after checking the wiring diagram again to make sure I was getting everything connected correctly.

NOTE! The wiring presented makes sense and should work but Dimarzio and Duncan use a different color scheme! On Dimarzio pickups the Black and White wires are connected together (in place of the red and white)

The last step is to epoxy the Kwikplug PCB to back of the pickup. I cleaned the back with some steel wool and a fine sandpaper. Potted picked are usually covered in a layer of wax which would prevent the epoxy from making a good bond.

That was not that much work. Now I’ll wire the Kwikplug cable into my guitar.

Conclusion

Was this worth it? The cost is pretty cheap at $5. It looks like it should work. I haven’t tested yet. In this case the cable was so short I was having trouble wiring it so this pickup needed some help. Splicing the cable, while not hard, is a messy solution. The Kwikplug seemed like a better idea than splicing.

The real question that makes this system useful, is whether or not you have other guitars and pickups to swap. With only one pickup and one guitar, I’m not making much use of it at the moment. If get another pickup with a Kwikplug, and want to swap in the future the process should be fast and painless!