Hi,
I received my set of HB1's friday and decided to install them in my '06 4003 tonight replacing the set of Barts I had in there.

After installing them as is from the factory (red wire to pickup selector switch and blue/shield to the back of the pot)I'm getting very low output as compared to the stock single coils and the Bartolinis. Also, the tone is a bit on the treble side.

Do I need to reverse the polarity of one of the pickups?
I'm obviously confused at this point. :)

Are both pickups like this when used individually? (Phasing between the pickups only affects the both-pickups setting.)

If so, are the black and clear wires connected together under the heatshrink tubing?

Do you have a multimeter to check the impedances?

Thanks.

I'll have to check the individual pickup levels when I get home tonight.

I did verify, on only one pickup at this point, that the black/clear wires are soldered together. I thought maybe they weren't from the factory and check one.

The first thing I did check was the impedance of the pickups since I thought maybe something might be wonky with them.
across 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 I'm getting ~7.2K. Across 1 & 4 I'm getting a ~14.2K ohm reading for each pickup.
I checked for loose or broken solder joints too.

I'm still at a loss as to why the output is low and the tone "thin".
I think I'll try to figure out how to make a recording and compare the HB1's to the single coils just to make sure I'm not going crazy. Not a completely fair comparison but the only other passive bass I have is a p-bass and the Ricks volume is about 1/2 of what the p-bass is.

Those are the correct readings.

If so, the only explanations I can think of for a low, thin output are either that the magnets are both dead (unlikely, but theoretically possible) or that the pickups have been wired wrongly to the hookup cable and the coils are out of phase with each other - that will certainly produce a quiet, thin sound. If this is the case, if you reverse one of the coils it will fix it. Swap either the blue and clear wires (clear to ground, blue to black, red to hot) or the red and black (blue to ground, clear to red, black to hot). (Not both!) Try one pickup first and see what happens!

I'll try swapping the south coils red/clear/black wires around and try. At least then I won't have to unsolder from the back of the pots.

I'll double check the wire colors at the pickups and make sure they are soldered according to the HB1 diagram. I just assume everything coming out of the factory is correct. ;)

Thanks

Thanks BlueAngel.
Just to give a quick update I pulled my pick guard off and looked at the back of the neck HB1.
Sure enough the color coding of the wires are incorrect from the factory. Or at least they don't match the schematic of the HB1/HB2 on this site.
Black and red are switched. Red is going to "1" and black to "2". So instead of "1" and "3" being soldered together I had "2" and "3" soldered, from the factory. No big deal to switch the leads but it would saved me some time and headaches if they were correct.
I'm not sure what that makes the wiring but a quick switch and test produced a nice tone from the neck pup. Now to pull off the bridge HB1 and fix that as I'm pretty sure its wired wrong as well.(keeping fingers crossed)
I admittedly don't know much but I'm assuming they are not supposed to be coming from the factory like that. ;)

UPDATE*
That was the problem. My bass sounds fantastic now.

You can save yourself some trouble with an ohm-meter.

14 kOhm=stock
7 kOhm=single coil
3.5 kOhm=parallel out-of-phase, thin-sounding

I did as I reported in my second post. But, that was measuring on the solder points on the pickup, not from the leads. I didn't measure from the leads assuming they were correct. Thats when I should have noticed the leads colors reversed (not my doing but the factory)but didn't.

I was just posting that for future reference. I fiddled with an HB-1 and its wiring quite a bit one night. I wish I hadn't sold it, after playing a 4004 I'd like to have a couple of HB-1's in a 4003. I like its dip in the high frequencies... perfect for a bass.

So it came that way from the factory? Odd, that suggests it was parallel out of phase. I'd be shocked to learn they are actually wiring 4004s that way--most people don't prefer it. However some do...

It was series out of phase - which is why it was giving the correct total impedance, both across each individual coil (7K) and the pair together (14K), but the wrong sound. It was an error, not an intentional way of wiring the pickup. A humbucker out of phase with itself is always uselessly thin and lacking in volume, because unlike putting two separate pickups out of phase, the coils are so close together that there is almost complete cancellation of all but the very high harmonics.

The alternative wiring that works is parallel in phase, which would also give an impedance of 3.5K ohms. I'm not a huge fan of this either, I prefer a straight single coil if you want a brighter, lower output, but parallel in phase sounds reasonably similar (although to me, not as 'direct' and defined) and has the advantage of still being hum cancelling. Parallel in phase requires (on a HB1 with correct wiring) the blue and black wires both connected to ground, and the clear and red both connected to hot.