help with tone control and twangbanger

[charleyhorse]

I have a 97 american standard strat that came factory wired with a jumper between the middle and bridge positions on the 5 way coming from the lower tone pot. With my standard bridge pickup and the factory wiring, I had bridge tone control but nothing on the middle pu. I should also note that the tone pot looks a little different and has a notch type of feel once it winds to 10.

I dropped a twangbanger in this afternoon and wired it exactly as the stock pu was. Black wire to volume pot, white wire to 5 way. When test driving, the middle pickup was now impacted by the tone control, and the TB lost significant volume as the tone control dialed down. I reversed the wires, black to 5 way and white to volume pot...same result.

Removed jumper wire and ran wire from tone pot to bridge alone, same result, TB loses sig volume when dial tone down. Kept jumper off and ran tone control wire to mid pu.

Now test driving...the TB is not as hot as my stock pick up, seems thinner, and I have no tone control on it.:gurmpy:

What is wrong?

 

[charleyhorse]

Re: help with tone control and twangbanger

testing.....testing.....is this thing on?

 

[bert123]

Re: help with tone control and twangbanger

You have Fender No-Load tone pots - at 10 the pot is completely out of the circuit.

White wire goes to 5-way switch.

I had similar problem with a rewire (1 Vol, 1 Tone plus a blender pot). I had the messed up the ground of the tone control and it was acting as a second volume control. I just unsoldered it, cleaned up , and then tried again much more carefully. I think I had created a short somewhere that my old eyes could not see.

 

[charleyhorse]

Re: help with tone control and twangbanger

Thanks for the reply and advise. I tried the T'banger tied to the plain 250K pot from the neck pickup and put the neck on the no load...same result, the T'banger just does not seem to like the tone controls..wanting to dial a little bit of the bite out like I do on my tele, it seems to just cut down on output and muddy up. Really wanted this PU to work...

 

[MattPete]

Re: help with tone control and twangbanger

Check to make sure that the copper plate on the bottom of the Twangbanger isn't contacting anything metalic. In my case, the Twangbanger was contacting the copper foil on the back of my pickguard, causing it to short out.

 

[charleyhorse]

Re: help with tone control and twangbanger

Okay, I checked the resistance of the TB, thinking, there is no way this pickup sounds like this and gets all these rave reviews. I found that this PUP is not right..
nowhere close to the resistance it should be...off to my dealer to swap out...will repost with review upon re install.