I recently acquired a Gibson Sonex 180 Custom both out of nostalgia purposes (I had one 25 years ago) as well as the fact that I wanted to harvest the Dirty Fingers out of it for my LPC. After I pulled the Dirty Fingers pickups, I decided to transplant the neck SH-1 and bridge SH-4 out of my LPC into the Sonex just to keep it alive and kicking. Everything worked, but the pots were scratchy and cheap and the pickup selector switch was on it's way out plus the coil tap switch was bent 45 degrees off axis. So I went ahead and reamed out the small holes and installed two CTS 500K linear taper volume pots and 2 CTS 525K audio taper tone pots from The Art Of Tone. This model Sonex had the coil tap switch so I connected the white and red wires from the SH-4 to one of the new DPDT switch's upper lugs and sent the lug below it to ground via the ground terminal of the jack (this was how it was wired with the Dirty Fingers). Obviously the SH-1 isn't tappable. So when I fired it up, the tone control for the neck SH-1 is basically acting as volume pot...but it is not grounded out anywhere! I changed the pot from the 525K to a standard CTS 500K I had lying around, used the stock green chicklet tone cap, a Russian PETP cap, an orange drop and even a CD Black Cat I had laying around. Tried several different wiring diagrams for Gibsons; '50s, modern, all with the same result. The only thing I can think of is somehow it's because the SH-4 is being half grounded when tapped and the SH-1 is not? Doesn't matter whether the tap is engaged or not though...tone pot does not roll off any treble, and as a matter of fact the treble that is there is more than I've ever heard out of a neck pickup. Volume works fine in the neck pickup circuit and the bridge circuit works perfectly.
Can anybody think of what might be the case here? I checked immediately to see if the tone pot was grounded out somehow and it's not and I even changed it out in case it was a bum pot. What am I missing.
Can anybody think of what might be the case here? I checked immediately to see if the tone pot was grounded out somehow and it's not and I even changed it out in case it was a bum pot. What am I missing.
