1965 Kay Vanguard Wiring

[kayvanguard]

Hi,

I picked up this 1965 Kay Vanguard and I'd like to see if I can reduce the amount of hum it's picking up. The pick guard is partially shielded and there is a ground wire going to the tail (although touching the strings noticeably reduces the hum, which makes me question the conductivity of the chrome tail).

The wiring is a little confusing to me. I have experience with strat wiring, but I'm unfamiliar with the resistors and capacitors in this guitar. It also appears as if the components are grounded using multiple wires. I'd like to remove all of the ground wires and collect them together in a single ground point, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm seeing. Any advice, or has anyone worked on these guitars before who could help me interpret this wiring? Thanks.

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: 1965 Kay Vanguard Wiring

Welcome to the forum.

The picture is too small to see every wire and where it's going, though I can recognize from other Kay wiring photos and schematics on the web it's just a generic 2PU 2V 2T 3-way wiring. The only thing that is not clear are the extra resistors on the volume pots - presumably a type of treble bleed, but one of them looks like it's not wired across the lugs as I would expect.

The resistor value can be decoded by the colored bars (http://image.slidesharecdn.com/enjr...p01/95/resistorcharts-2-638.jpg?cb=1411001015 or http://www.doublehelixgroup.com.au/tip_2007_12/RCcodes.jpg).

The cap values are written on the side if you can decode it (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3GBvh9H9aig/ThBaVlJIVMI/AAAAAAAAAH0/aYts_p1woOw/s1600/lyly_20.bmp).

Rerouting the grounds isn't going to buy you much, unless one of the grounds is touching something they are not supposed to now. I think the problem will be the pickups themselves. I believe those are 3.5k single coils. Probably something like a dummy coil would be necessary to cut any more hum.