Can bad wiring cause distortion?

[pirateninja]

My guitar had a wiring issue and it got fixed at a shop. However, i've lost faith in that shop. He scratched up my guitar and his pitch is obviously off, and he didn't install the bridge pickup correctly. I'm going to do this myself. Anyway - i think there may be a wiring issue still. Because on clean, with a seymour duncan SH-2N jazz pickup, it's a classic rock distortion! Same amp, same settings, different guitar...same pickup. Crystal clear cleans.

My guitar cleans up once i roll down the volume on the guitar considerably, but i'm wondering if a wiring issue is causing this. There's no reason for it to be so distorted!

 

[crusty philtrum]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

Hi
despite the distorted sound, do you think the pickup is putting out the right LEVEL, i.e. volume? You haven't had to set the pickup overly high or low to compensate?....

 

[pirateninja]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

If you mean if the volume seems right, i think so. It's about the same volume as the previous pickups. By the way, the bridge pickup distorts too. Also the previous pickups did the same. I mentioned it to the guy at the shop but he said it must be the speakers in the amp. However, the only thing it could be at this point is wiring. Does anyone know what exactly is wrong with the wiring? I'd like to try fixing this myself, i don't trust shops at all anymore. All they've ever done is take money and ruin guitars.

 

[crusty philtrum]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

It doesn't have one of those little passive preamp/overdrive things in there does it? I think there's one called 'Black Ice' or something available from Stwart MacDonald. It is a cube about 1/2 inch each way that replaces the tone cap, and could be mistaken FOR a tone cap. Because it's passive, there would be no battery....I think there are other similar devices. I know it might be a long shot, but worth investigating as it would explain the symptoms you describe....

 

[pirateninja]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

Could be. I'll check it out tomorrow, i don't have any tools on me right now. How would i recognize if it's a tone cap or a preamp system of some sort?

By the way is there any way i can find out if the guitar has some preamp system without actually looking inside? It's a jackson RR1 but a rather old one, '92. I can't find anything helpful on their site.

 

[Mephis]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

Play with your tone knobs. It's possible someone put a black ice distortion thingy in. (It's like a fake distortion box in a tone cap.)

 

[crusty philtrum]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

Re. my post above....the Black Ice booster will be a black cube about 1/2 inch each way with a couple of wires coming out. Now most tone capacitors won't look like that, they would most likely be a disc or cylinder shape and will probably have some very small numbers and/or letters on them. It's hard to be exact, as there may be other types of passive booster that could be confused for a tone cap if you're not sure what you're looking for. I do think you will need to look in there, and maybe try to find someone to help (not the guy who's already worked on it, by the sounds of it). Do you have access to a camera? You could post a pic of the control cavity so we could see it .....I'm not familiar with Jackson guitars, is it a model with all the pickups and controls mounted on a scratchplate? If it is that type, you probably detach it from the rest of the guitar and take the plate to someone for an opinion. Any half decent tech in a tv repair shop or similar should be able to tell you if it's a capacitor or not....he would be able to do a couple of simple tests (I believe the boosters may be just a couple of diodes inside the little cube).
Even better....I think these boosters are wired in like a tone cap....if thats the case, just disconnecting one of it's wires would disable it but the guitar should still work....and I would imagine it would work properly.

 

[pirateninja]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

By the way this guitar was NOS when i got it so noone could've put it in there, it could only be made with it. Anyway - yeah it's mounted on the scratchplate. If it really is in there, is it a replacement for the tone capacitor? Or is it more of an addition that i could disconnect without any problems?

 

[pirateninja]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

Oooook i realized what's wrong with it. It uses some active preamp system. I don't know why the guitar tech didn't tell me this. There's a battery inside. Unfortunately everything goes through it(or at least the volume does) and without it the guitar doesn't work. And i'd rather not tinker with it that much myself. So i guess i gotta take it to a shop again.

 

[crusty philtrum]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

hi
Sorry, I'm not familiar with Jackson guitars so i never thought about the possibility of active pickup(s) in there. The problem could now be....do you have one or more active pickups in the guitar and the (passive) SH2N? Or are the other pickups passive too? Mixing passive and active pickups is a pain, and best avoided. Go with one type or the other. If you go back to all active pickups, quite likely the circuit is fine and would just need a fresh battery. If you go passive you will need to get the active circuitry out of there, and that will probably include the pots (controls) as they will need to be different values for the passive system. You may also need another passive pickup!...hard to say as we don't know what the other pickup(s) are that you have in there....I suspect they may be the originals, but that may not be the case. Let us know what you find.

 

[pirateninja]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

Before it had 2 stock jackson pickups, i don't know if they were active or not, i don't think they were actually active. Right now i've put in a dimarzio x2n and the sh2. The battery isn't for the pickups, i'm fairly certain. I don't think they were active. It seems to be some kind of active gain boost.

 

[crusty philtrum]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

OK...I don't know the DiMarzio range but I'll assume the X2N is a passive pickup. In that case, I'd find a wiring diagram to suit the control layout on your guitar (i.e. 2 volume/2 tone, or 2 volume/1 tone, or 1 volume/1 tone, etc) and wire it from scratch, getting rid of the booster of whatever it is. You might want to check the pot values, probably you'd be wanting 500k's for humbuckers. Get a nice clean simple passive circuit that works, then you can hear your guitar properly and then it can be tweaked if needs be.
You could read the reviews of your guitar at the Harmony Central User Reviews to see if you can get a picture of how the electronics were originally. I don't have much to do with active pickups, but there can be 2 types....some have a preamp built into the pickup itself, and others have their preamp separate, usually some kind of little box in the control cavity with a bunch of wires coming out. Maybe someone took out the active pickups and left the preamp box in there? If the guitar originally had active pickups, you'd probably find much lower value pots in there, maybe 25K (normal for active but no good for passive pickups). If you got this guitar NOS, i assume you have been it's only owner...how long have you had it? Did it originally work ok? Was it using a battery?

 

[LJ King]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

Before it had 2 stock jackson pickups, i don't know if they were active or not, i don't think they were actually active. Right now i've put in a dimarzio x2n and the sh2. The battery isn't for the pickups, i'm fairly certain. I don't think they were active. It seems to be some kind of active gain boost.

Jackson Randy Rhoads

According to these specs (there is a spec link below) there is no mention of a preamp. Chances are someone added it.

The tech probably did not tell you it had a preamp because it is your guitar and he figured you knew.

But since you did not, I would first replace the battery with a new one.

 

[pirateninja]

Re: Can bad wiring cause distortion?

it's a '92 model, things changed since then.

By the way when i got the guitar it wasn't making any sound. I thought there was a wiring problem. The tech "fixed" it but actually all he did was replace the battery.

Anyway i'm gonna go to a shop and see if i can get the active whatever it is taken out.