An unbalance in the force...

So, as soon as the fs 1 turned up I quickly removed the strings and scratchplate off the 77 hardtail and started soldering..
Removed the wonderful alnico 3 and 5 Eric Johnson pups and stuck the dimarzio sds from 78 in the neck and middle positions and the fs in the bridge. The fs an alnico 5 magnet with the sds using huge ceramic magnets.

First off and the bridge wouldn't juice up.Upon investigation I noticed a very strange wiring set up.As far as Im aware the fs is a 2 conductor wire.This has a bare wire, green wire, white wire and black wire...no red, so not even 4 conductor..perhaps somebody has fixed the original..I didn't buy it as a rewound however...Desperate to get the juice up I simply grounded the black, green and bare and soldered the white to the 5 switch.

She kicked in but was completely out of depth compared to the sd's. These sound fantastic, even in the neck and middle. Playing thru a clean channel they give a truly awesome tone, running wide open tone controls (otherwise they do get very dark) but still have an incredible sound, p90 meets humbucker but still retaining single coilness sound..

The two I bought were a bridge and a neck.I have one more original 78 which is being donated and unless I can sort out the fs (removing tomorrow for another scan) and the fact that the fs doesn't have f-spacing so the E isn't over the pole, I think I'll drop in the cream covered 78 and run the whole shooting match with these pups.

Pictures to follow once the surgery is over.

The surgery is over and the difference is tremendous.
First job was to solder all the grounds together into one and lengthen the cables to ensure the pup would fit in the middle pocket.
Once soldered and dropped in and with the sd 1 in the bridge, the set up really balances out the tone and there is no significant drop when switching between bridge and neck.
The bridge is not f-spaced which is a shame, but I'll keep it that way.
The wiring set up is standard so there is no tone pot on the bridge pot either.

Although Malsteen never used his middle pup, preffering bridge and neck , I do and I'm really happy with the mix between alnico and ceramic, fs dp110 and sd dp111.

Picks to follow, dimarzio cream on black for the moment..