J Moose
New member
Sorry this is a bit long but I gotta explain the saga;
One of my buddies has a Tele with a set of Barden's and in the process of swaping bridges around (we pulled a Fishman piezo off and put a regular 3-saddle on) the neck pickup went dead but the bridge pickup lived. Strange.
I talked to Donzo right after it happened & figured it needed a rewind but we never got around to pullin' it out and sending it off to him.
Well last week we finally got around to mucking with it and after an afternoon of multimeters, alligator clips & bingers we realized that the pickup isn't dead! Well, at least it doesn't need a rewind!
What we found was that the red & white leads (for the tap) were actually broken off at the bottom of the pickup where they attach to those posts. So I got the bright idea of jumpin' 'em together right at the pickup and it didn't do anything...still dead, just a little bit of ground coming through.
But, when we took the red & white jumpers & attach those to any ground source the pickup roared to life!!! It didn't matter if we attached 'em to the bridge ground, the pots or even the ground wire on the bottom of the magnet.
So questions;
1) Does that sound about "right", that it needs to have contact with ground? The bridge pickup (as far as we can tell) just has the black & green leads attached to the volume pot & switch. If the neck pickup does need the "extra" ground, can my buddy jumper it together at the pickup with no-ill effects or should he extend it to the control plate and tie it together there?
It's a regular old Tele. No crazy switching or anything.
2) The posts for the red & white leads are wiggling around like a loose tooth and my friend had the idea of dropping a bit of epoxy in there to make them more stable. I'm not so sure that's a hot idea and when we ran it past another guitar geek friend he was unsure. We don't want to kill the pickup with good intentions!
Thanks much!!!
One of my buddies has a Tele with a set of Barden's and in the process of swaping bridges around (we pulled a Fishman piezo off and put a regular 3-saddle on) the neck pickup went dead but the bridge pickup lived. Strange.
I talked to Donzo right after it happened & figured it needed a rewind but we never got around to pullin' it out and sending it off to him.
Well last week we finally got around to mucking with it and after an afternoon of multimeters, alligator clips & bingers we realized that the pickup isn't dead! Well, at least it doesn't need a rewind!
What we found was that the red & white leads (for the tap) were actually broken off at the bottom of the pickup where they attach to those posts. So I got the bright idea of jumpin' 'em together right at the pickup and it didn't do anything...still dead, just a little bit of ground coming through.
But, when we took the red & white jumpers & attach those to any ground source the pickup roared to life!!! It didn't matter if we attached 'em to the bridge ground, the pots or even the ground wire on the bottom of the magnet.
So questions;
1) Does that sound about "right", that it needs to have contact with ground? The bridge pickup (as far as we can tell) just has the black & green leads attached to the volume pot & switch. If the neck pickup does need the "extra" ground, can my buddy jumper it together at the pickup with no-ill effects or should he extend it to the control plate and tie it together there?
It's a regular old Tele. No crazy switching or anything.
2) The posts for the red & white leads are wiggling around like a loose tooth and my friend had the idea of dropping a bit of epoxy in there to make them more stable. I'm not so sure that's a hot idea and when we ran it past another guitar geek friend he was unsure. We don't want to kill the pickup with good intentions!
Thanks much!!!
