Quietest Hot Rails Ever

[Empty Pockets]

Well this is the third attempt at wiring up my friend's Squier with the simplest scheme ever (Hot Rails bridge/volume) and everything seems to be working except for one problem...the pickup is insanely quiet. It's not even 1/4 as strong as it was before we tried to put it in the Squier.

We had it plugged into a Fender Frontman 15, which isn't very loud but definitely should have been louder...we even tried my Warmoth for comparison and it was too loud with the volume around 5, so the Hot Rails being quiet at 10 seems absurd.

What could be wrong? I've triple-checked all of my solder joints and they all seem fine. Maybe a damaged potentiometer?

-X

 

[Artie]

Re: Quietest Hot Rails Ever

It could be the pot, but also look for simple, silly mistakes like: did you connect the red and white wires together and insulate them? When you put everything back together, might the bare ground wire be getting up against a "hot" wire? (I've had that happen to me.)

When everything is back together, put the volume on "10", plug a cable into the jack, then measure the resistance across the tip and ring of the other end. If you used a 250k pot, the reading should be around 15.8k. If you used a 500k pot, it will be around 16.3k. If its very far off from either of those, you have a problem.

Artie