Tv Jones Bridge Pickup Mystery

[Nsatke81]

Hi All!

Trying to understand/troubleshoot why this mystery is happening for the second time. The first time was with the supertrons and this time with the classics.

I just replaced an epi LP that had Rio Grande P90s in there before, everything worked fine. FYI, white is the hot lead to the 3rd terminal of the volume pot and black goes to ground.

With TV Jones the white is hot, black is ground, tied off the individual coils. Again, hot to 3rd terminal, ground to back of volume control.

I checked everything last night by running an Allen wrench over the coils, everything sounded right on both pickups. All the connections were tight and it sounded like they were mated well together.

But when I strung it and plugged into an amp, it was a different story. The bridge was so quiet that it was totally clean on the red channel of a 5153 with the gain cranked. When I flipped to the neck pickup I almost knocked the house down.

Any thoughts? One thought I have is that they mislabeled neck and bridge but to have it happen twice across different models seems rather unlucky. Would love to remedy the situation. Or at least have an answer and see if someone else had this problem.


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[Artie]

. . . tied off the individual coils.

Did you actually solder them together? That's important.

Edit: I notice that TV Jones says that they pre-solder those wires, so probably not a problem. Unless you bought them used.

 

[hamerfan]

Mixed up neck and bridge …maybe?

Check the dcr thru the guitar cable just to get a ballpark reading.

 

[Nsatke81]

Did you actually solder them together? That's important.

Edit: I notice that TV Jones says that they pre-solder those wires, so probably not a problem. Unless you bought them used.

Good point, Tv Jones did indeed send them taped up.


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[Nsatke81]

Mixed up neck and bridge …maybe?

Check the dcr thru the guitar cable just to get a ballpark reading.

I just checked. The bridge is clearly labeled. I guess they could have come incorrectly labeled from the factory.

How do I get a dcr reading through the guitar cable?


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[skelt101]

I just checked. The bridge is clearly labeled. I guess they could have come incorrectly labeled from the factory.

How do I get a dcr reading through the guitar cable?


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Touch one lead from your Multi Meter to the tip, the other to the sleeve. Make sure you are set to Ohms 20K.

 

[Artie]

Touch one lead from your Multi Meter to the tip, the other to the sleeve. Make sure you are set to Ohms 20K.

And make sure you have the selector only on the pup you're measuring and volume on "10." Tone doesn't matter because it's isolated from the measurement by the cap. Then, if you want to be more accurate, take your reading, (on a calculator), hit the reciprocal key, subtract the reciprocal of the volume pot, and hit the reciprocal key again. That's the actual reading.

 

[eclecticsynergy]

Touch one lead from your Multi Meter to the tip, the other to the sleeve. Make sure you are set to Ohms 20K.

And make sure your volume & tone pots are turned up full.

~

It's also possible the pickup's lead wires are mixed up, so the wire colors aren't going to the correct coils.
This has been known to occur sometimes, even on Duncans.
Never heard of it on a TV Jones but there are far fewer of them out there compared to Duncan.
When humans are involved, mistakes will happen.

 

[Spaghetti Bolo]

Toggle switch ok? I've long abandoned the open leaf switchcraft types due to how unreliable they are.

 

[GuitarDoc]

The neck and bridge are not mislabeled...there wouldn't be that much difference (as you have described). It's almost definitely a wiring/connection problem.

It would be helpful, no necessary, for you to take very clear pics of your wiring showing every connection. We should be able to figure it out from that.