OK I messed up...HELP!

S

savage8190

New member
Well I am completely rewiring my guitar and changing the pups for the first time....and I did something wrong. When I select the neck pickup it works perfectly, volume and tone both working fine. When I select the bridge however the tone knob does nothing, and I can just barely hear it with the volume on 10, if I turn it down at all its just complete silence. When I turn the tone pot it sticks and clicks, the volume pot turns fine.

I think its safe to assume I fried the tone pot....would that be the cause of everything? I dont see how that would effect the volume....did I kill that one too? Is there anything else it could be? I've triple checked the wiring against a diagram and everything is where it should be....

I have learned a valuable lesson from this....I suck at soldering and I will be getting a tech to do major things like this from now on :).

Oh and BTW, the 59 neck sounds great :).
 
Re: OK I messed up...HELP!

1. Soldering just takes a little practice to get right. After you get it down, this is no longer a major job.

2. Is it possible for you to take a picture of your guitar's wiring? It might be easier for us to lend advice if we can see what you're talking about. If no picture is possible, then what kind of layout is it? You've mentioned neck & bridge humbuckers, but what else is there?
 
Re: OK I messed up...HELP!

Ooop, sorry, I guess I should have said what it is. Its just basic Les Paul wiring, 2 humbuckers, 2 volume, 2 tone, 3 way switch.

I followed the Seymour Duncan diagram, Except that I used shielded wire for the 3 connections coming off the switch and grounded the shielding.
 
Re: OK I messed up...HELP!

don't give up on the soldering, everyone sucks at it at first.

and it's possible that your pot will survive, and that it's a dodgy connection or a short that's the problem. i've had similar situations where these have been the causes of the kind of thing you're describing.
 
Re: OK I messed up...HELP!

Ya I seemed to start to get the hang of it after a bit. I still struggle a bit with getting a nice clean connection on the back of the pots, especially with the shielding....it looks terrible but it should work. Everything is on there solid, I tugged on every connection with some pliers to make sure as I went along.

I really am at a loss here. Maybe I will try replacing the tone pot and see what happens. I obviously did something to it seeing as it gets jammed up when I'm turning it. It was the first one I tried doing, so I must have left the heat on too long.
 
Re: OK I messed up...HELP!

Hmmm... I've done some strange things to pots and only burned out one or two. In fact, last night I installed a 490r (braided) in a guitar and the neck pup would "warble" and then lose it's bite (at one point it stopped working) everytime it was engaged through the 3-way. Strange. Eventually I found that it didn't like being grounded to the tone pot - I had to run a wire from the braid wire to another ground lead. Then it worked fine. Strange.

We'd need to see a photo of the wiring to help.
 
Re: OK I messed up...HELP!

Well I dont know what the heck the issue was, but I just unbolted the tone pot in question last night and popped it back into the rear cavity (thinking I was going to unsolder it) and I noticed that it wasn't turning strangely anymore. I plugged the guitar in and everything was working fine??? So I put the pot back in place and its all good now.

Im thinking something must have been hanging up in the pot and causing an issue because despite my drilling I had to jam it in there a bit the first time...weird, but Im happy I didnt have to do anything and I got the wiring right :).
 
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