Help needed

7

79flash79

New member
Hey everyone,

I'm fairly new to guitar assembly and have just completed another project.

It's a telecaster fitted with Quarter Pound Set, 250k pots (tone with orange drop 0.22) and a 3 position switch (gibson style rather than the usual tele).

Now, the problem is that the pickups sounds very weak and bassy (specially the bridge) and if I roll the volume from 10 to 8 the sound is completely gone before I reach 7.

Any ideas what i'm doing wrong here?

I appreciate any insight you guys might share.

Regards
 
Re: Help needed

Hmmmm......sounds like something funny must be going on with the wiring. Any chance you could post a picture of the wiring?
 
Re: Help needed

The description coupled with the photos sounds like the tone cap legs are touching the positive input, which is bypassing the pot and sending the signal through the cap all the time - so you've got 100% bass signal all the time.

As for why it's weak, I'm not quite sure. I'm seeing a mix of white and black wires, sometimes white appears to be positive and other times it appears to be ground, so it's not easy to tell what's going on.

Did you have a specific diagram you were following?
 
Re: Help needed

Hi beaubrummels,

I can't see the cap legs touching any positive but the tone pot is not working actually (or if it is, it's very subtle).

I'm sorry for the white/black wiring. .. the only two colours I had and you can't read it from colour cause i used without thinking colour really, which makes me feel stupid right about now. Sorry about that.

I think i will have to rewire this only thing and do a better job at it.

I was pretty much following a mix of the SD wiring and other cause of the different selector switch. Thing is the switch works fine so...

By the way, just measured the pickup resistance through the lead and i get ridiculous values ... 2.15k and such ...

Let me know if you think of something.
Cheers
 
Re: Help needed

My approach would be to remove the wires from centre and high volume side of volume pot first. This removes the pots and cap from the circuit. Connect your meter across the wire from switch and ground. You should measure as you switch, the one pickup, both in parallel, then the other. You should see say 5k, 2.5k 5k. (I could not find the spec for the pickup resistance so used 5k per pickup) I see you have used conductive earth shield paint, great stuff. Is it possible the cap is shorting when you close it up? Try it with the circuit hanging out. If you then join the 2 vol pot wires to each other but not touching pots You should get max vol and tone.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Re: Help needed

Hi all,

Thanks for your comment and suggestions.

I have now removed and rewired the whole thing with an American Fender Tele set...

I got the same problem.

The volume pot only really works on 7 to 10 and tone wise, still sounds bassy...

If you have any suggestions, keep them coming.

Thanks again
 
Re: Help needed

It looks right from the picture, though I can't tell what's going on with all the taped up wire. My guess is hot and ground are switched at the jack, so the positive is going straight through the cap to ground all the time, making it bassy, and that also might explain the volume not being effective because it's reversing the taper.
 
Re: Help needed

beaubrummels said:
It looks right from the picture, though I can't tell what's going on with all the taped up wire. My guess is hot and ground are switched at the jack, so the positive is going straight through the cap to ground all the time, making it bassy, and that also might explain the volume not being effective because it's reversing the taper.
Click to expand...

Well, the taped wire (black tape) is really just an extension from (hot) pickups to selector switch on the back of the bridge.
As for the masking tape, that's hot and ground from jack... and they're both connected right based on the diagram.

Few wild cards here...bear with me i know very little of electronics so:
Could it be the pots are 'broken'? (Bought new from Ebay trusted supplier)

Could the selector switch be wired wrongly? (it works as it should for it's purpose tho)

I can't understand this.

It started off with 500k pots, Quarter pounder neck and hot stack bridge (both pickups new). This problem was there.
I rewired to 250k pots, Quarter pounder set (again, new pickups). Problem persisted.
I rewire the WHOLE thing on the same 250k pots, with American telecaster set (2nd hand but with correct reading on meter). And here we are with the same issue.

Help anyone?
What am i missing here?
 
Re: Help needed

250k pots will be darker sounding than 500k. I don't know if that's enough to make it as dark as your description. I've only used 250k on true single coils.
 
Re: Help needed

So you used white for the hot out of the pickup, but switched to white for the ground to the output jack?
 
Re: Help needed

beaubrummels said:
It looks right from the picture, though I can't tell what's going on with all the taped up wire. My guess is hot and ground are switched at the jack, so the positive is going straight through the cap to ground all the time, making it bassy, and that also might explain the volume not being effective because it's reversing the taper.
Click to expand...

This ^^
 
Re: Help needed

chadd said:
So you used white for the hot out of the pickup, but switched to white for the ground to the output jack?
Click to expand...

Hey chadd,
That sounds right.
It's a white wire coming from selector switch to volume pot and also a white wire for ground from jack.
 
Re: Help needed

It's a stumper. The pictures 'look' right. I feel your pain. The Tele is among the simplest circuits: what could possibly go wrong?

I've had similar problems just doing standard Gibson wiring in a Les Paul, yet I spent a couple weeks doing a Jimmy Page wiring job and all of it worked the first time, except one solder point, which I knew exactly which one.

I think at this point, you need to get a test meter and start from the jack and start testing solder connections for continuity working out from the jack until you get to the pickups. Test only positive, then test only ground connections. Then test the components, test each pot for resistance values. I have a cheap meter that tests capacitance (enough to tell if the cap is the right value and is functioning) - I would recomment that as well. Also as a sanity check, test the pickup resistance at each pickup and then test it again at the jack with that pickup alone selected and ensure you get the same values.
 
Re: Help needed

Hey folks,

Thank you all very much.

I have now found the problem with my half steam sounding Tele.

As some of you mentioned before, you were right. The problem was indeed in the jack as the tip, when a jack was in, touched the paint in the cavity. WOW

Guitar sounds sweet as it should now.

Thanks all for your input .

Regards
 
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