Hot Rails reading 0.L on the meter

[ramz434]

New here - but I've got a neck Hot Rails for a Tele thats reading 0.L on my multimeter - black is the hot / green is the ground. The red and white each read 5.5, and the bridge pickup reads correctly (roughly 15v). On the neck there is continuity throughout the wires, and I've taken readings at the solder spots on the pickup where the wires connect and at the North Start / South Start solder marks at the bottom of the PU as well - all reading 0.L

Is this thing shot? Im thinking its got a short somewhere.

thanks

 

[shadowfire90]

Re: Hot Rails reading 0.L on the meter

One coil may be damaged if you're only getting 5.5k. There is a way to diagnose this. At first I was going to describe how to do it on an import rail copy but then when I pulled up an old image I realized it won't help.

de-solder or cut the connection between the red/white wire. Inspect the entire wire. Especially where the wire was stripped so the interior 5 wires are. I used to do this once in a while before getting good wire strippers.

Now that all 4 wires are stripped set the multimeter to 20k in ohms. Same as always pickup testing. You should get a reading between
black / white
green / red
roughly 5.5k each as the pickup in series is just over 10k

Hopefully it's fixable

 

[ramz434]

Re: Hot Rails reading 0.L on the meter



Theoretically I shouldnt have to desolder anything - I can use the poles that are attached to the bottom of the pickup, right? Measure it from there?

 

[shadowfire90]

Re: Hot Rails reading 0.L on the meter

exactly measure each pole from there and see if you get the two readings , if you get the two readings the pickup is fine. I'm glad they really improved the build quality on hot rails and similar seymour duncan pickups.

The really cheap import rails I remember I put a pickguard together for someone and they decided to go with larger screws they thought looked better after everything was tested. Long story short with older hot rails and cheap import rail pickups the starts and finishes of each coil are/were dangerously close to the mounting screws so he killed one of the coils by accident.

 

[jeremy]

Re: Hot Rails reading 0.L on the meter

black/white is one coil, red/green is the other coil. do you get readings for both coils?

 

[ramz434]

Re: Hot Rails reading 0.L on the meter

black/white is one coil, red/green is the other coil. do you get readings for both coils?

I got 5.5v going Black/Red & Black/White and 0.L going Black/Green. Havent measured Red/Green yet. Going to measure that when I get home from work. Pretty sure Im going to measure 0.L on that - I spent a bunch of time playing around with the meter and the wires last nite, and I remember the Green giving me problems with every combo.

 

[ramz434]

Re: Hot Rails reading 0.L on the meter

Black / White - 5.5v
Red / Green - 0.L

so one of the coils went bad?

 

[jeremy]

Re: Hot Rails reading 0.L on the meter

seems like it yes. you could reflow the solder on the two connections for that coil and see if it helps. low chance of it fixing anything but it cant hurt