Nordstrand Pickups & Pope Pre Install and Function Help

[nervous]

I am installing a set of Nordstrand Fat Stacks and a Mike Pope preamp and am now in the final stages of install and wrapping up the overall ground wiring. I am sure this has been done many times and am looking for an experienced installer to point me in the right direction.

It looks like there are preamp input options for both 'pickup ground' and 'shields ground'. I get the shields ground for everything but the pickups as the Nordstrands have two grounding wires available, black and gray. Per info from Nordstrand the Black is the pickup coil ground, and then Gray is the magnet ground. I am not sure with the pickups which goes to which ground, if it even matters. Reading the Flexcore manual it isn't clear if the magnet ground needs to be separated. If so, I would connect black to pickup ground, then gray to shields ground.

Normally they would tie off to the same common ground but with the two input panel options I’d like any guidance you can offer so I do this once and know that I have it right.

• white wire to the pickup hot
• red wire to pickup tap
• black & gray - which is 'ground' and which is 'shield' for the wiring purposes for the attached diagram?

 

[Alivefor5]

Black is Pickup ground, grey is shield ground. Bridge and cavity grounds will also go to shield ground.

 

[nervous]

Perfect. Thank you.

 

[nervous]

Up and running. The jack is fussy to which cord I use which is new to me but I have passive and active signals now.

• Is it normal for the volume control to be non-functioning in pull passive mode?
• Where or how do you set you pre amp trim screw level?
• Am I correct that the 'battery' terminal on the balance board is not needed for anything if one is using the board modular conector?

 

[nervous]

This is just making me wacky tonight. I see jumpers on the volume board. They are labeled 'bdg' and 'mst'. So, following the installation instructions as best as I can understand them and placing the jumper as indicated on the bdg pins I have active passive but no volume functionality in passive mode. Moving that jumper to the mst pins gets me passive volume control but it's not much control. It's virtually on and off. The slightest counter clockwise shuts the volume off. netter than nothing but I can't believe that's right.

Also, the output level is awful. Set flat, in active mode, with the trim at 3/4 or more (full on introduces a lot of unwanted hiss) it's about 20% of what my East preamp is also set flat. Again, I can't believe that's right. Can the active output be that low normally? I have reviewd the rest of teh wiring and it seems correct. I have normal bass/treble/hi mid/lo mid controls, the passive tone is working in active mode, hard to tell in passive and may not be working in passive mode.

With no point of reference I am spinning here with what's good or what may be wrong.