Any Wiring Pros?

[Darkkill57]

So for a year now my strats been out of order, despite my constant searching for answers. My problem is this, I bought three new pickups to upgrade the cheap stock pups in my frankenstrat. The pups from the neck position down are a Seymour Duncan cool rails, vintage rails and a jb. Jr. . Now that I've spent a year wiring the same scratch plate with no success id say I know a bit more about wiring than I ever did. The problem with it is when I turn it and tap the pickups close to no noise noise comes out, and if it does its very muffled. The second problem being, the muffled noise only will come out of the top coils. I'm trying to learn about how Seymour Duncan pups work but correct me if I'm wrong. When you wire them a certain way you can choose to have them act as a humbucker or single coil.

I'm wiring them so both coils are always up so the way I wire them is as told in every schematic i read. Black to switch, red and white soldered together and taped off, and green and bare to ground. From my understand this should cause them to act as humbuckers. But when I put power through them it's as though they want to act as single coils. It's been a year with this problem and I just want my favorite guitar back and thoughts or suggestions would be welcome and appreciated.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

Welcome to the forum!

I am sorry you are having such trouble with this. It will help if you show us what schematic (what you want the knobs and switch to do) you are working with, and provide pics of your work so far, so we can diagnose what is going on here.

 

[Adieu]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

Here's a switchable diagram that can do both humbuckers and split single coils via pushpull pot:

Here's just HHH:

If your wiring LOOKS correct, but doesn't function:
1) check that your jack isn't loose
2) check for a cold solder joint --- if ALL pickups' signal is screwed up, it's either jack hot, jack ground, switch output to volume, volume output to jack, or common ground on pot back

 

[Darkkill57]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

I'm using the bottom most example and what exactly is a cold solder? Also in the pictures I only have my cool rails connected to see if may be i wired one at a time and tested as I went it would be better. Spoilers......it wasn't any better.

 

[Darkkill57]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

 

[Adieu]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

Cold solder is crap connection, you gotta heat the contact point not the solder blob... the star ground on the volume knob looks like a likely candidate

If you're a beginner with a cheapie soldering pencil iron, you're gonna be getting those...the lil things are for detail PCB work with just a teensy drop of solder and cant heat a big blob and the adjoining metal well. Big wattage, like 90w pistol grip irons, makes life so much easier.

Also, are you using proper 60/40 rosin core electronics solder?

 

[Darkkill57]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

I've never used a specific type of solder before and had any problems, this is a first, maybe I did just really overlook the ground and not heat it enough. My solder iron does go up to at least 450 but I only ever put it at like 300 ish cause I don't Wan a burn anything wire related. I'm probably just over complicating things as I do. I'll go ahead and re wire that ground an see what happens

 

[AlexR]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

The iron should be as hot as you can get it.
It seems counter-intuitive, but if you have to hold the iron on the pot backs for a long time due to low temp, you are way more likely to burn the innards than if you have it scorching and the joint is done in 5 secs from first application.
More than one of those pot back joins looks poorly formed. The solder should melt into a puddle, not stay as a blob.


If you have a multimeter, test your pickups for K reading in series mode.....once desoldered. Check this against their supposed reading counting in the % tolerance.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

It almost sounds as if you tone controls are permanently 'on' all the way with such a muffled sound...

 

[Adieu]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

I've never used a specific type of solder before and had any problems, this is a first, maybe I did just really overlook the ground and not heat it enough. My solder iron does go up to at least 450 but I only ever put it at like 300 ish cause I don't Wan a burn anything wire related. I'm probably just over complicating things as I do. I'll go ahead and re wire that ground an see what happens

Unless you hit wood or plastic (or nod off on heroin?), there's nothing burnable when soldering guitars.... I think my Weller with the boost trigger pulled is supposed to go to like 750 or 900°F? Short touch with that works well

Bigger gauges and parts mean things are quite different from soldering a PCB

 

[Adieu]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

If you have a multimeter, test your pickups for K reading in series mode.....once desoldered. Check this against their supposed reading counting in the % tolerance.

Or use the buzzer mode to test point to point on the solder job

 

[Darkkill57]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

So yuh did it boys, she's a workin again. I cleaned up those solder joints after reading up on cold solders, but it still had the same issue after wards. Then I got to thinking about every part i replaced from the stock parts. I made sure the pots were fine and they checked out, the switch was brand new and fender quality (take that with a grain of salt) but I got to thinking....what about the jack. When I tested it with my multimeter it seemed fine, but to satisfy my own mind I decided fuc k it why not slap the old one back in and see if that changes the problem......after that it worked......one year.....one God dam year and it was my "brand new jack" ugggh i couldn't Wan a kill myself more.

 

[SAguitar]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

Don't kill yourself now! Just play your guitar, 2019 is gonna be a great year!

On my first partscaster, I spent several months chasing down bad solder joints so I can sympathize a little.

 

[Darkkill57]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

So yuh did it boys, she's a workin again. I cleaned up those solder joints after reading up on cold solders, but it still had the same issue after wards. Then I got to thinking about every part i replaced from the stock parts. I made sure the pots were fine and they checked out, the switch was brand new and fender quality (take that with a grain of salt) but I got to thinking....what about the jack. When I tested it with my multimeter it seemed fine, but to satisfy my own mind I decided fuc k it why not slap the old one back in and see if that changes the problem......after that it worked......one year.....one God dam year and it was my "brand new jack" ugggh i couldn't Wan a kill myself more.

 

[Darkkill57]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

Thanks for the help everyone, you've been so much more helpful than other forums, now to clean up the frets and slap some new strings on this *****.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Any Wiring Pros?

Can we see a pic of this miracle guitar?