Control pots working in reverse> HELP!

[Kent S.]

Re: Control pots working in reverse> HELP!

Yes, it is the shield for the p'up wires, and also, usually grounds the pickup's mounting plate, but it doesn't necessarily eliminate the need to shield the cavities. I don't really have a lot of experience in this area. Hopefully someone else can comment on that aspect.

The shield is to shield the wires coming out of the pup along it's cable and to provide a convient grounding to the baseplate itself. Generally with humbuckers you will not really notice any difference (depending on your enviroment) as the pieces of wire running between the controls a relatively short, and the pot cases themselves are grounded so they act as shields, the ground to switch bodies does somethimg similar (actually just keeps the control from humming when your finger touches it ... e.g. a DPDT switch).
It does not take the place of shielding the caivty itself ... However that doesn't mean that shielding the cavity is always necessary ...if your are playing right next to something putting out strong EMI/RFI emmissions, then yeah the shielding will help, without it, the non-shielded wires in the cavity might pick up the noise. With single coils though, shielding is pretty much a must, at least the pick guard ... but since singles pick up hum anyway, the only purpose of the shields are to minimize that. A strat with fully shielded interior, and pickguard; fully shielded covers (something not often seen due to mechanical/space issues), and proper grounding can go a long way towards making it hum free. So you need to have the pup baseplate grounded anyway,so the shielded cable is a good way to do it ... the choice to shield the cavity is a personal/ situational one.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Control pots working in reverse> HELP!

Well, there is a *left hand or counter clockwise taper* which is a *right hand taper* ...

Now that you mention it, it does seem like I've heard that terminology before.

I haven't a clue why the controls would be working backwards, that would seem to be a physical impossibility.

Yup, either Mark drew the diagram wrong, or, (and I may be way off base here), I wonder if maybe Mark simply put the knobs back on disoriented from there original position. In other words, the knob has "1" pointing up, when at full volume. It would be easy to miss that the numbers were rolling around the wrong direction.

Sorry Mark - don't mean to be talking about you in the third person in your own thread.

[mark129]

Re: Control pots working in reverse> HELP!

Ok guy's, I screwed up. It's a long story, but the pots are working right now. I also changed the wiring on the four wire conductor and tied the W/R together, green and bare wire ground, blk hot. Does it matter which lug on the volume and tone pots I solder my caps to? I'll get this right sooner or later :-)

[Kent S.]

Re: Control pots working in reverse> HELP!

Ok guy's, I screwed up. It's a long story, but the pots are working right now. I also changed the wiring on the four wire conductor and tied the W/R together, green and bare wire ground, blk hot. Does it matter which lug on the volume and tone pots I solder my caps to? I'll get this right sooner or later :-)

It does, depending on what else you might want to do with the control, but for the run of the mill tone control (keeping with the LP style layout), you probably have the cap going to either the CW lug on the volume control (or the wiper), and then the other end on the cap going to the CCW lug of the tone pot, the wiper of that pot gets soldered to ground via the back of that pot. If you run the hook the pup side of the capacitor to the wiper of the volume pot instead of the CW lug; the guitar will lose less treble when the volume is turned down (aka ... '50's wiring). There are other ways to wire the controls as well, but we don't need to get into that, as they are specific to certain applications.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Control pots working in reverse> HELP!

Ok guy's, I screwed up. It's a long story, but the pots are working right now.

We all do!

If its not too embarrassing a story, sometimes it helps others who might be having the same problem to post what went wrong.