Tele Wiring Trouble

[ToneJourneyMan]

Hi guys,

I wanted to wire my Tele for one volume and two tones. I like to roll off the bridge pickup a little bit, but leave the neck pickup alone. I didn't want to just disconnect the neck pickup, because there are those rare occasions I want to get a jazzier sound, so I decided to add a tone knob. Unfortunately there are no Tele diagrams like that on the Seymour Duncan site, so I grabbed one for humbuckers with a three way blade, 1 volume, and 2 tones. I wired it up and the tone controls don't work. I'm not sure why. It seems to me that turning the pots should allow some of the signal to try to bleed to ground, passing through the tone cap, and hence filtering out some of the frequencies, but when I turn the knobs nothing happens. I've uploaded the diagram I used and some pictures of my wiring. Hopefully you can see what's happening in the rats nest. The rear pot is for the bridge tone and the middle pot is for the neck tone. Also, there seems to be a little more hum than there used to be. I'm not sure if that's a wiring mistake on my part, or just because there is more unshielded wiring and I should put some foil tape in the cavity. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[beaubrummels]

Diagram-wise, looks like it should work. Can't really see what all is going on with the photos. Does the ground from any of the pots go to the jack ground?

 

[ToneJourneyMan]

Yes, the rear pot back goes to jack ground and there is a wire running across the back of all three pots to join their grounds together.

 

[GuitarDoc]

I see some mistakes in your wiring, but the diagram is correct.. Best advice...start over and be very careful about following the diagram. It might be helpful to temporarily label the pots so you don't get confused. It would also be helpful in order to avoid confusion if you used a different color for all the ground wires. Good luck.