Tone pots not working anyone able to help????

[piratesi]

I'm new to wiring and soldering but I had ago at completely rewiring my Strat following a diagram for an HSH configuration with push/pull pots to coil split the buckers. Everything seems to be working well except for the push/pull tone pots, they make no difference to the noise what so ever can anyone help???

The diagram is below, have only wired in SSH at the moment because i'm waiting for a neck humbucker to arrive, i wired the single coil the same way as the other shown in this diagram could that be the problem?

cheers
Si

[jumble jumble]

Re: Tone pots not working anyone able to help????

What it could be is that the push/pull pots work the other way up to those shown in the diagram. Switch the black grounding wire to the other side of the red+white wires (so on that diagram the black wire would be removed from the bottom-left terminal and attached to the top-left one instead).

EDIT: wrong. See next post!

[jumble jumble]

Re: Tone pots not working anyone able to help????

Sorry, not sure what I was thinking with that post. That won't help. All I can think to check is that the red/white from the humbucker, and the black to ground, are both on the same side of the switch (ie they are in the same row of 3 contacts), and that the black is properly connected to ground.

[piratesi]

Re: Tone pots not working anyone able to help????

Sorry, not sure what I was thinking with that post. That won't help. All I can think to check is that the red/white from the humbucker, and the black to ground, are both on the same side of the switch (ie they are in the same row of 3 contacts), and that the black is properly connected to ground.

Cheers for that mate i'll check that, hopefully that will sort it

SI

[piratesi]

Re: Tone pots not working anyone able to help????

Cracked it! it was all down to my dodgy soldering, the Cap had fractionally come away from the bottom of the pot so I just soldered it back on properly and its all good!

[Liko]

Re: Tone pots not working anyone able to help????

Cracked it! it was all down to my dodgy soldering, the Cap had fractionally come away from the bottom of the pot so I just soldered it back on properly and its all good!

Cold solder joint. Gets you every time. It'll even look good when it's done because the flux acts as a glue, at the same time it's providing a barrier between the solder and the pot shell. If you plan on doing much more soldering, get a multimeter that can read resistance/continuity; touch one probe to the pot shell, the other to the top of the solder point, and if you read zero ohms you're good.

I would also have suggested that you burned out the pots trying to solder to the shell. I don't like soldering to pot shells for that very reason; much easier to use a ring terminal, or shield the cavity with copper tape and solder to that.

[piratesi]

Re: Tone pots not working anyone able to help????

Yeah the joint looked perfectly good but when I pulled on it the Cap wasn't even attached. Cheers for the tips i'm new to this, as a first attempt i'd say its gone pretty well only a few glitches, i think i might have to invest in a multimetre. I thought that I had fried the pots but I did work quite quickly to avoid overheating them turns out they were fine it was just shoddy soldering!

I'm so happy with the sound of my Strat now wish i'd done this years ago, i put a set of Pearly Gates in the bridge and it sounds awesome. I was going to coil split the neck pup when i get a humbucker but I don't know if i need it really, i'm thinking about using the other push/pull pot to engage the neck instead so that i can have a neck and bridge combination, i've only got a standard 5 way switch.