Help W. Installing Please!!

[quiksilver1280]

Hi all...

Maybe someone out there can help me out...

I just uninstalled my pickups on my schecter c-1..

I put in an SH-8B and SH-4 in the neck..

I have a soldering iron, and I thought I was doing it right, but I just need some help because one of the pods it wont stick too, and that pod is now much looser than it was..

When i turn the actual knob, it turns past what it normally should..

any suggestions? please?

 

[Rev Donzo]

Re: Help W. Installing Please!!

hi sandpaper the tops of the pots were ya need to solder to it,

take off the knob and tighten the pots mounting nut.

when you heat up the solder if you get it too hot it will not stick,

the solder sticks just as it starts to spead out-- remove the heat when you see it spreading, If you overheat solder it will not stiuck, also If you make any ugly grey flat color solder joints (those are know as Cold solder joints- & usally with those no conection was actually made) wait a little while till it cools and then reheat them and try to make them all as shiny and chrome as you can..
soldering is an art -- it takes most guys about a year to get really good.. but as long as your making strong joints and there shinny -- youre fine!

 

[quiksilver1280]

Re: Help W. Installing Please!!

Rev,
i appreciate your response.

I am basically just wondering, should I go ahead and keep crackin on this pickup issue myself, or pay the 40 bucks or so for a pro? I am a college student so the money is real important right now, but I dont want to be in a situation where I completely destroy my pups.

Another question to see if I am doing this whole thing correct or not.

Ok,
when I unsoldered the old pickups in my guitar, there were 4 wires.

The red/white wires were twisted together, and they were under a sleeve type casing that i slid off.

The green wire was soldered to the neck volume pot. On this pot there were 3 prongs. The other two prongs had stuff soldered on it. When I soldered the green one of the NEW pick up, i just kind of put it on the prong where the OLD green wire was. Where exactly should that be soldered onto?

Finally, there was one large black wire that was soldered just on the back of the pot itself. When I unsoldered the old one, it didn't seem like it was in any special place, just on the back of the pot.

On the new pick ups, there was a 5th wire that i didnt know what to do with. There was the red/white, the green, the black, and one more that had no coating. All these wires were the same diameter. I took the black and the uncoated wire and twisted them together, and soldered them on the back of the pot.

is this right? wrong?

So i repeated this same process for the bridge pick up. I plug in my guitar to the amp, and it makes noise, both on the neck and the bridge. When i try to tune it with an electric tuner, the thing just started to go HAYWIRE.

So i dont' know whats up. This is my first time doing this (obviously), and i will do everything in my power to do this myself for both economic and personal satisfaction reasons.

I would appreciate further help

 

[quiksilver1280]

Re: Help W. Installing Please!!

oh one more side note. The knobs you referred to that i had to unscrew, do they just unscrew from the top? The pots are all soldered up with other wirings like to the input and the pickup selector, so i couldnt imagine doing work on them themselves, that would require a ton of unsoldering/resoldering and its clear im sort of inept in that dept.

I hope you mean the knobs can just screw off the top of the guitar, and i can tighten some bolts or screws from the top w.o having to mess with the actuall pot itself.

I'm starting to become real frustrated!

 

[Artie]

Re: Help W. Installing Please!!

It sounds like you may have toasted a pot. Just under the pots cover, (the part that people solder to), is a thin plastic disk that controls the range of travel by hitting a small metal tab thats in the cover, opposite the lugs. If you look closely, you can see the tab pushed in, in the cover. If you apply too much heat to the cover, you'll melt that disk - which also supports the wiper.

Its why I never solder to the back of a pot. You really need to chack it with a meter to see if the wiper is still contacting the resistive strip. If the pot turns farther than it was meant to, its probably messed up. You'ld need a new pot in that case.

Artie

 

[quiksilver1280]

Re: Help W. Installing Please!!

how much would a new pot cost? I dont have the proper tools to check that, i dont have any sort of meters...the tone pot is the same way but that happened far before i even took the cover off the cavity.

 

[tone4days]

Re: Help W. Installing Please!!

ok - you've got quite a lot there ...

first ... for your new SD pickups, the conventional way to install them is with the green and bare wires soldered to ground (e.g. the back of the pot) .. the black is conventionally used as the 'hot' wire ... the bare wire is the ground wire for the pickup itself (note: the color code for other manufacturers pickups could be different from the SDs - there is no 'industry standard' color code)

a new pot shouldnt cost too much - there are some righteous tone bros on the forum here who sell em and you can google for plenty of online sites

you have to be certain to be careful with your terminology ... the 'knobs' are on the outside of the guitar and are what you use your fingers on to adjust the volume and tone ... 'the 'pots' are inside the guitar cavity and have their shaft sticking up through the hole in the body/pickguard ... the knob can be attached to the pot shaft by either 'friction' or 'a set screw' ... if they were a friction fit and you 'twisted them off, you mightve stripped the little 'teeth' that provide the friction .. when you reinstalled them, they might turn round and round without grabbing the shaft well enough ... if the pot shaft turns round n round by itself (with the knob taken off), then yeah, it's toast