My first post everybody, hope this is correct section. All apologies ahead of time and also thank you ahead of any help. So, I finally decided to get one of those diy guitar kits and having played for a long time put some decent pickups and such in it as opposed to the generic cheap stuff it came with. I should be done, but something with the wiring is off. Basically the neck pickup doesn't do anything. I'll list a bunch of stuff that I already went with multimeter over to check, but basically have a 3 way toggle switch and if I plug in and put switch to bridge the bridge pickup works fine, on neck I get nothing, on middle I have to have the volume turned on both pickups or else nothing registers which for some reason I found a little strange or may just be my lack of knowledge. This is my first time wiring for anyone reading this. One thing, and not sure if relevant but want to leave nothing out, I can plug guitar into my tuner and in any position on the toggle switch I can tune it. Which if neck wasn't working...thought shouldn't get any signal? I'm attaching a couple pics, one of the wiring diagram sent with the pickups which use that single wire shielded cable. The other is the setup (which I find the guitar had a small area for the pots and all). The pots on right are for neck: top right is neck volume and bottom right is neck tone. So, things I already checked and did:
1) Grounding. Everything is grounded. I used multimeter and put ground on jack ground and went through each pot, bridge, strings...got a clean signal from each.
2) Switch. I though at first maybe switch was bad and I had an extra so I did change that out, but situation is the same. I checked and the ground is fine with it, plus checked from hot lead to jack and checked the bridge and neck tab on it and got a signal. (sorry if my names of parts aren't correct).
3) Pickups: Used multimeter and connected to ground and live inner wire (it's those shielded wires where you solder the outer to pot for grounding) Both pickups were reading right around 8.5 k which is in the range for them. When plugged into amp, I did the screwdriver tap test. The bridge pickup I get the "pop" sound when tap it with a screwdriver. The neck however, I get nothing. But I got a reading from the neck pickup of 8.5 k just like the bridge.
4) I understand the shielded cables on the pickups like this can cause shorts if touching things like the caps or other metal spots and have kept them clear of those while testing everything and plugged into my amp.
5) I thought maybe my soldering on neck volume and tone pots may have been bad or a wire, so I went and removed the wires, cleaned everything up, snipped the pickup wire back and did fresh soldering, but still same thing (note: I did clean up the old solder before doing fresh, I may be new, but not lazy
)
6) Checked between all the little tabs on pots and no solder or random wires are touching or crossing over. I went through and made sure no junk was lying around just to be safe. Not that there was before, but check all the little things.
I'm honestly at a loss as to what could be wrong. My next step would be to bring this to a local pro and have them figure it out, but wanted to try here first. Since been building the whole thing I want to find out what is wrong and why it isn't working correctly. Is it possible I had two switches that are both bad? Or is there some soldering issue? The fact I don't get anything from the neck pickup in the amp, however when I use the multimeter on the pickup it is saying that it is good has me confused although perhaps someone with more experience understands. Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated, and thanks once again in advance. The pots are CTS full size 525k pots. The pots are brand new and were reading fine.
1) Grounding. Everything is grounded. I used multimeter and put ground on jack ground and went through each pot, bridge, strings...got a clean signal from each.
2) Switch. I though at first maybe switch was bad and I had an extra so I did change that out, but situation is the same. I checked and the ground is fine with it, plus checked from hot lead to jack and checked the bridge and neck tab on it and got a signal. (sorry if my names of parts aren't correct).
3) Pickups: Used multimeter and connected to ground and live inner wire (it's those shielded wires where you solder the outer to pot for grounding) Both pickups were reading right around 8.5 k which is in the range for them. When plugged into amp, I did the screwdriver tap test. The bridge pickup I get the "pop" sound when tap it with a screwdriver. The neck however, I get nothing. But I got a reading from the neck pickup of 8.5 k just like the bridge.
4) I understand the shielded cables on the pickups like this can cause shorts if touching things like the caps or other metal spots and have kept them clear of those while testing everything and plugged into my amp.
5) I thought maybe my soldering on neck volume and tone pots may have been bad or a wire, so I went and removed the wires, cleaned everything up, snipped the pickup wire back and did fresh soldering, but still same thing (note: I did clean up the old solder before doing fresh, I may be new, but not lazy
)6) Checked between all the little tabs on pots and no solder or random wires are touching or crossing over. I went through and made sure no junk was lying around just to be safe. Not that there was before, but check all the little things.
I'm honestly at a loss as to what could be wrong. My next step would be to bring this to a local pro and have them figure it out, but wanted to try here first. Since been building the whole thing I want to find out what is wrong and why it isn't working correctly. Is it possible I had two switches that are both bad? Or is there some soldering issue? The fact I don't get anything from the neck pickup in the amp, however when I use the multimeter on the pickup it is saying that it is good has me confused although perhaps someone with more experience understands. Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated, and thanks once again in advance. The pots are CTS full size 525k pots. The pots are brand new and were reading fine.
