Wiring Mystery.

[Riffmeister]

I put a new bridge pickup in my guitar last week. Everything worked fine and I loved the pup so I decided to shorten the lead. I unsoldered it, shortened it and soldered it back EXACTLY as I had the first time.

I also had a new neck PUP to put in so I unhooked the old one and again put it in exactly as the old one.

When I was done, all the sudden my volume controls don't do anything!! Either one , I have one for the neck and one for the bridge. The pickups seem to work fine and I pulled a bit on the wires to make sure I didn't have a loose connection or something ,but nothing happened. What the hell did I do ????

[mm2002]

Re: Wiring Mystery.

Double check the pickup lead to vol. pot wiring. It sounds like you've bypassed the pots. The hot lead from the pickups should be going to the RH outside terminals on the pots. If you wired them to the center you're probably bypassing the pot.

[Riffmeister]

Re: Wiring Mystery.


They are wired to the outside terminals, and there is a capacitor soldered to those terminals jumping across to the center ones. Like I said it worked fine before llike that, but if I watned to take out the cappacitor, do I need to do anything with the center lug, or just unhook it. The capacitor isn't working any way.

It was put there cause the guy said that when you rolled back the volume, it got muddy, but it still does that.

[nonamemx]

Re: Wiring Mystery.

It should be wired like this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3.../Volumepot.jpg

What the capacitor does, is it forms a "bridge" bypassing the volume pot. A Capacitor BLOCKS lower frequencies, and lets high ones pass. So when you roll down on the volume, it cuts down like normal on the low-to-mid range, but allows more high frequencies, for an overall "clearer" sound.

This cap should be around .001mf.

If you find the sound to be too bright when you turn down the volume, you can restore some bass by putting a 150k or 300k ohm resistor in parallel with the .001mf capacitor.

[Riffmeister]

Re: Wiring Mystery.


My set up has the wire to the switch coming from the lug wit the hot wire from the pickup instead of the center one. It was like that before though, I didn't mess with the wire to the switch.

Although it did work until yesterday [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] The voulme would never completely go off,there was always a bit bleeding through.

Should I change the switch wire? If I take out the cap, are there any changes I need to make or just keep the wiring thesame? Thanks!

[Ace]

Re: Wiring Mystery.

Can you take a picture, or maybe draw a schematic if you can of your problem?

[Riffmeister]

Re: Wiring Mystery.


Ace, Look at the link Nonamemk posted above. Put the blue(switch)wire where the Green (tone) is, I have no tone control.

That is how mine is wired, It was always wired like that, but now the volume controls don't work at all they are full on all the time.

Again, all I did was basically unsolder the pickups and solder them rightback EXACTLY, but now no volume control.

[Riffmeister]

Re: Wiring Mystery.



Ok I fixed it, I had to move the wire going to the switch to the center terminal. I do't know how it worked before unless the signal was being caried thru the capacitor to the terminal.

But now that I removed the capacitor, it seems like the sound is a LOT Brighter! Will a 250k pot take care of that?

[nonamemx]

Re: Wiring Mystery.

Well, the way you had it would have been similar to the tone pot being rolled down.

You dont like the new-found brightness?

[mm2002]

Re: Wiring Mystery.

That's because you just re-wired a tone pot as a volume pot. WTF are you doing here??? Got any pics?

[Riffmeister]

Re: Wiring Mystery.


No it is a bit too bright. There were no tone pots in it to begin with. The guy that wired it had the hot lead from the pickup going to the same terminal as the one withthe switch, the RH outside one and a Cap wired between the RH and middle one. NO pics, but like I told ace, just look at the link in the post above and switch the blue with the green wire and totally disregard teh green as there is no tone pot.

[nonamemx]

Re: Wiring Mystery.

well, you could get a mini-pot and wire up a tone knob. You could have it in the control cavity, and not necessarily on the face of the guitar, tweaked to however bright you want.


Or I think one of these would work,
http://www.radioshack.com/product.as...5Fid=271%2D284

Its basically a mini pot, but requires a screwdriver to adjust.

[Riffmeister]

Re: Wiring Mystery.

Cool, thanks!