1st Guitar build - wiring help needed.

[baxterbaker]

I am building my first guitar from a kit. ( I have 6 others that I tinker with) and the info sent on the wiring of the guitar is very limited. From my research on this forum it looks to be a wired like a jazz bass - 3 pots and two pickups. I have attached a picture of what was provided in the kit, one mag pickup and one piezo bridge pickup. I want to make sure that I fully understand the wiring of the guitar before attempting to solder things together. Please confirm that the pot with the capacitor is the tone and the other two are volume. Also the black wire is the ground.



Thank you for you prompt insight and your help!

[newey]

Can't tell much from the pictures, I have more questions than answers:

-The piezo pickup appears to have a mini (or micro?) plug attached to it. Do you know where that plug is supposed to go?

-The pot with the capacitor is a tone. WHether the other two are volumes or not, I can't see from the picture, and again, can't tell where the piezo plugs in. It strikes me as possible that the third pot may be a blender pot to blend the piezo and mag signals, but can't see the connections from the photo (and I can't enlarge it, either).

-It looks as if the + output (red wire to the jack) is soldered to the tip of the jack rather than to one of the solder lugs. There are 2 solder lugs on the jack, one for the tip connection and one for the sleeve. Those are where to make the connections to the jack. While the connection to the tip will certainly work, at least for a while, the contact for the tip of the plug is in effect a "moving part" of the jack- it bends backwards a bit when you insert the plug into the jack, to make contact with the tip of the plug. That movement is likely to cause that solder joint at the tip to fail at some point. Use the appropriate solder lug to make that connection. (It is sometimes hard to see which lug is which, you have to examine the metal collars under the phenolic insulator layers carefully).

-Finally, is there an active circuit for the piezo pickup (i.e., a preamp and 9V battery)? Most piezo set-ups will have an active preamp for the piezo so that the relative output levels of the two types of pickups will better match each other.