where'd I go wrong with my Emg install?

[zeegler]

The whole point of the stereo jack is that is acts as a switch. As soon as you push the guitar cable in to the socket it closes the circuit that connects the batteries to the pickups. Every EMG wiring diagram I have ever seen shows a standard stereo jack that has two prongs that contact the shaft of the plug. They are staggered, so that if it was a stereo plug, they would contact the two separate sections of the shaft. In this case, you have a mono plug with only the tip and shaft. Both prongs contact the shaft, which closes the circuit.

It's not rocket science, but I believe what messed me up was the stupid shielded leads. The shield needs to be soldered to the back of the pots, which is tricky because you don't want to get it so hot that it melts the insulation of the core, or overheat the pot, which is exactly what I think I did. IMHO I think it's a stupid design. Pots should be made with tabs on the back for solder points. That would help prevent the pot from frying.

[MountainDog]

A stereo jack and an EMG jack are the same thing. In the thread you linked to, Nazul had a switch that for some reason had two lugs going to the tip, which is NOT a stereo jack.

As I mentioned in that thread, hook up the EMG to the stereo jack as follows:
Wire from middle of Volume control (shown as white in EMG diagram) goes to the switch lug that connects to the tip of the 1/4" plug
Wire from ground of pot (shown as black in diagram) goes to the switch lug that connects the base or lowest part of the 1/4" plug
Black wire from battery goes (also shown black in diagram) goes to the switch lug that connects to slightly above the middle of the 1/4" plug. This acts as the switch to turn on the battery when you plug it in.

[Mikernaut2]

Well I'm still stumped. tried different pots and even another EMG 81 and I still get the same 70% output. Sounds like Rock distortion vs Metal .grrrrrrr

There must be a wrong or bad wire in the mix affecting the output.

and yes I have tried several batteries too.

[Shibs]

You may be dumping something to ground as well. Make sure all of the Pots and the injput jack are the ones supplied with the PU's! Cut the ground to the bridge and check the PU height (seems stupid but does help).

Shibs

[Mikernaut2]

So in diagram 5 what is the purpose of the wire I colored Yellow? I took it off to see if anything would happen but nothing was affected as far as I can tell.

Another thing I noticed is that 1 black wire from the input jack is shown to go to the volume pot in this diagram vs the tone in all the other diagrams. Tried that out for the hell of it and got totally no sound, so connected it back to the tone pot.

Another point of interest is that the tone pot doesnt seem to be working or if it is it's barely noticeable.

[marcus]

I am not sure about the yellow wire, but if the tone pot is not working at all, you may have shorted together the lug on the tone pot that is grounded (black wire) to the lug that is connected to the capacitor (middle lug). This will give you the affect of having the tone control rolled all of the way back all the time, regardless of the position of the wiper in the pot. That could explain your lack of volume.

One way to test this is with a multimeter set to the resistor test setting (or Ohm or whatever it is called on yours) and test the resistance between these two lugs. If you do this at both of the extremes (knob turned all the way one way, and then all the way the other way) you should get a low resistance (close to zero) one way, and high resistance (close to the full value of the pot) the other way. If both readings are low resistance, they are shorted together.

[memphiskat]

I had a VERY similar problem. When plugged into my POD on a high gain patch (recifier... think early metallica sound) I got very little distortion. I had a signal but it was as if you dialed back on your volume knob (like you said down to 7 or so) and the heavy distortion disappeared but the signal was still pretty strong. I also had the same problem with the tone knob making some change but very little. When I checked my solder connections and pressed firmly on the braid onto the pot I got full distortion.

It was definately a bad solder joint between the braided sheild/ground and the back of the pot. I had a very short lead on one pickup and ended up just stripping the sheild back away from the inner signal wire and soldering a lead wire to the sheild (wrapping that connection in electrical tape, shrink wrap would be better) and soldering a second wire to inner signal wire. I then was able to run the "shield" wire to the top of the pot and the "signal" wire to the switch. This made way more connections then what all the diagrams show, but made getting the sheild connection to the top of pot way easier and more secure.

I can't say for sure this is what is causing your problems but the from your discription of the sound your getting it's suspiciously similar.

Karl

[Mikernaut2]

well fook me. Finally found the problem. It seems my soldering job of the red wires from the pickups, and battery were shoddy. Redid it and I have full EMG gain/crunch. Thank god , what an annoying lesson I learned. ( like I initially said my soldering skills are weak , hahahaha)

Thanks everyone for chiming in with input and advice, It finally got me to recheck everything until it pointed toward a weak power source/connection.

[Grayson]

I know you're problem is solved, but know this just in case. Be sure your "new-to-the-cavity" battery isn't shorting anything. Wrap the entire (conductive) shell of the 9V battery in electrical tape to prevent it from shorting a pot lead to the grounded cavity.

You suspect that resoldering your wires solved the problem. However, in the process of doing that you may have ended up moving your battery that was shorting everything out to a slightly different position where it wasn't shorting anything.

Just a thought. Hopefully you'll never have an issue again