symptoms of toasted pots

[Quencho092]

ok, i finished wiring my dad's p-j style ibanez sr-700. I believe that i may have toasted his pots...must know symptoms. And by the way, can anyone tell me a site with a good wiring diagram for this kind of bass. I followed stock and it gets a motherload of hum, even with the p bass pickups only. help.

[Indie P Bass]

Re: symptoms of toasted pots

Sounds to me like you didn't send the right wire to ground. I've done that before. The fender website has an affiliate called, "Mr. Gearhead," it has Schem's for almost ever fender, use the schem's from either a squier or fender special p-bass.

[proxy]

Re: symptoms of toasted pots

I doubt you toasted the pots, because pots are just a variable resistor, so I doubt you burnt them out from the output of the pickups.

[ArtieToo]

Re: symptoms of toasted pots

I think he may have meant "toasted" as in over-heated, from soldering to the back of them. Which is why I never do it. Pots aren't designed for that kind of heat, and its really unnecessary.

[Kent S.]

Re: symptoms of toasted pots

The Ibanez site has schematics for download on everything they ever did, also the symptoms of overheated pots are varied and many; You can experience a muffled tone (kinds like a tone pot turned down), an eradic taper, dead pots (opens), shorts, a thin weak sound, never noticed more hum, but I suppose that to is possible as well. Areas to look at would be to recheck your grounds (bridge grounds, cavity shields), and also output jack polarity (as in did you swap the ground to the tip, and the hot to the sleeve).
Some of the old Fender bass schematics showed a brassplate under the pups, that needs to go to ground as well if yours is a similar setup.

[B2D]

Re: symptoms of toasted pots

One of the pots on my MIA Fender just went bad... its wasn't the stock Fender 250k pot but a Proline 500k one. I got it back from having a rewire done and about 3 months after that the pot became staticy, hummy, microphonic, sound cutting in and out, etc. Is this just a bad pot or is "toasting" a pot not a fast-acting poison?

[ShredMAN]

Re: symptoms of toasted pots

One of the pots on my MIA Fender just went bad... its wasn't the stock Fender 250k pot but a Proline 500k one. I got it back from having a rewire done and about 3 months after that the pot became staticy, hummy, microphonic, sound cutting in and out, etc. Is this just a bad pot or is "toasting" a pot not a fast-acting poison?

I think it's just a POS pot, ususally toasted pots are noticable pretty much right away

[Kent S.]

Re: symptoms of toasted pots

I think it's just a POS pot, ususally toasted pots are noticable pretty much right away

Yep, ... it's possible to shorten the life of a so so pot thru overheating, but normally the damage is done at once ( at least that's what I've run into).
Who's to really say whether exposing a pot to heat had anything to do with it acting up three months down the line, contributing factor ... maybe, or maybe not ... no real way to know. A lot of cheaper pots (or even good ones that just happen to be bad) don't show their problems right away.