How much would a rewire cost?

[Grandturk]

Re: How much would a rewire cost?

Everyone who's done much re-wiring has made mistakes, and sometimes it takes a while to find them.

True. True.

The number one enemy of soldering/wiring success is impatience. I know, I've recently done two stupid wiring mistakes.

- One - completely left a ground off the neck volume pot of my SG and had an incomplete loop. This was so stupid that I stared at it for 15 minutes trying to think of how exactly I did it that way to begin with. But it all comes down to patience - if I had taken the time to just look the work over, I wouldn't have made the mistake in the first place.

- Two - wiring up a SSS 5 way vol/tone setup in a strat. Hurried through it and eyeballed the tone control wiring. Yup - tone pot not in the circuit at all - don't know how I did that one. Still need to pull the pickguard and redo it.

 

[FrankyBoy]

Re: How much would a rewire cost?

This thread is awesome. I've been thru A LOT of frustration in the past weeks because I made a Dan Armstrong Green Ringer clone. It was my first project beside pickups and I got impatient many times. Most of the time, I find the mistake while i'm in the bed, almost sleeping. Errors I made just flash into my mind after a while...

Anyways, keep the nice posts coming.

 

[blueman335]

Re: How much would a rewire cost?

Most of the time, I find the mistake while i'm in the bed, almost sleeping. Errors I made just flash into my mind after a while.

+1. As you lie there in the middle of the night, mulling over what you did, and didn't do, it can suddenly come to you. "Oh yeah! Now I know what to try!" It's never anything difficult.

Absolutely, impatience is your worst enemy. None of this stuff is hard. We do much more complicated things every day. This is no harder than following a road map (and the same guys are probably getting lost regularly too). It's unfamiliar to us, we get in a hurry and want it to be overwith so we can play the guitar. And that's what screws you up. Rushing it, being haphazard & sloppy, and not paying enough attention. You miss dumb things.

The most important thing is to learn from it. Don't make the same mistakes again. Basically we take a very simple and quick procedure & turn it into a long frustrating project. It takes far less time to work slow & methodical, than to go back & try and find what you missed. Better to take an extra half hour the first time, than to spend days or weeks hunting for a problem. There's no time-savings in hurrying.

 

[GuitarDoc]

Re: How much would a rewire cost?

Good advice to take a break and start all over again.

On one of my latest projects, I had everything wired up, I plugged it in and it worked perfect. Then I unplugged it and tightened the pots and screwed on the back plate and plugged it in, but one of the pickups wasn't working. I took it apart and checked every solder joint, checked the conections to each pot and push-pull and and switch and everything was correct. I redid most of the connections just to make sure, but it still didn't work. I was ready to take everything out and start all over again with new switches and pots. Then I noticed that one of the pots must have rotated when I first tightened it up and one lug was touching the side of the control cavity which was painted with conductive paint. The lead lug on that pot was grounded out. Just rotated the pot a bit and everything is hunky dorey.

It usually is something so simple we never would have thought to check it.

 

[blueman335]

Re: How much would a rewire cost?

Then I noticed that one of the pots must have rotated when I first tightened it up and one lug was touching the side of the control cavity which was painted with conductive paint. The lead lug on that pot was grounded out...It usually is something so simple we never would have thought to check it.

That's happened to me a couple times lately. A few other minor (dumb) things that can cause you grief:
- wire sticking out thru a soldered lug that can touch the lug next to it. Trim these cleanly.
- solder drips or runs that make an unintended connection. Don't use more solder than you need to.
- plastic-coated wire that has a bare spot (from being touched by a soldering iron). Wrap any bare spots with electrical tape.
- push-back type wire that touches a lug on any of the pots. This one can drive you crazy: everything works, until you put the cover on the control cavity, then a PU goes silent. Now I usually put a piece of plastic or bubble wrap between the pots & push-back wire.
- solder on a pot casing for a gound wire that won't stay on tight. It'll hold better if you sand or scratch the spot you want to solder.
- some wiring methods have a hot & ground from the toggle to the neck volume pot, but only a hot to the bridge volume pot. There has to be an extra wire added between volume pots. Forget that one little wire at your own peril.
- with used guitars, I've had a couple where the previous owner cut out all the wiring, and replaced it with odd scraps of wire, and wasn't entirely sure where everything was supposed to go. You usually have to start over with one of these, and redo it all yourself.

In all your wiring/soldering, make sure that every conenction can withstand some bumps. The last thing you want is to haul in your gear, get on stage, plug in, and have a dead guitar. One of the many reasons to take a back-up guitar to gigs.