Shielding darkned tone

[stratotak]

I just shielded my strat copy following instruction form guitarnut.com..It has 2 carvin single coils in neck and mid and stock pick up in bridge.After shielding it was noticably much quieter.Only thing that seems to have changed was the tone.It sounds more darker,like the tone was all the way down.Adjusting tone dosent seem to make any change in sound.Even the bridge pick up has a dark tone to it.Its not a bad souind..sort of like Brian Mays tone.And it seems to have more sustain now. Sounds good with Amplitube and the Brian May preset.Ive tried removing tone capacitior and it didnt make any change to sound so I have left it off.In instructions it said you could leave off the large capacitor If there wasnt room or If you were never going to be using a old vintage amp or pluging into a bar with questionable wiring.I followed instructions and wired it up the way it showed in artist rendering...except for the large capacitor..What would effect my tone??Id like to get back the bright sound back.It didnt seem to matter if the capacitor was in or removed,it sounded the same.Anyone with idea why my tone has changed and why I cant adjust it with tone knobs??What normaly would removing the tone capacitor do to the sound??

[ccoleman]

you should check with a meter that the wiring exactly matches the diagram, and that there are no shorts or open wires, because you might have a short that is loading the pickups too heavily causing them to be dark. either that or the electromagnetic interaction with the shielding material is messing it up... but I believe the tone should be unaffected by a well performed QTB mod.

[png123]

Also check all your wires are connected and soldered well.
Cover them in electrician's tape if need be

[stratotak]

I went back and rechecked all the grounds and made sure everything was snugly secured with tape so nothing was shorting out,but the tone still seems to be different.I pluged straight into pc and used audacity to record a few chords and what not while flipping through pickups.I used a site named file factory to host the mp3

www.filefactory.com/file/01c1d2/

just scroll down where it says to download for free..

its just straight guitar into audigy 2 mic input and audacity to record it..no other processing to affect tone

[UnklMickey]

hi Stratotek,

Welcome (belatedly) to GuitarNuts2.

(guys, look at the post count, and give a proper greeting to the newbies.)

your first post suggested your tone pot might be shorted (by the sheilding), but since you removed the cap entirely, that answers that question.

the tone control probably made no difference, because the sound is so dark, it's cutting treble that isn't even present.

or treble that is being totally cut later.

to determine which of these two, is your problem, use another guitar / cable /amp that works properly.

then substitute your guitar, for the proper one.

if yours still sounds dark, it's the guitar. if NOT, substitute your cable, etc.



let's assume, for discussion, that you have completed this test, and found the guitar to be the problem.

does it sound darker than normal in all positions? if so, the problem is between the output terminal of the selector and the output jack.


what sorts of things cause a guitar to sound dark?

the first one that comes to mind, is heavily loading the pickups.

(low resistance from hot to ground.)

did you change your volume pot (now a lower resistance)?

did you use carbon paint, and get any between a hot connection and ground?

did you paint your jack cavity, and now have a partial connection between the hot of the jack and ground/

do you have a solder blob making a partial (resistive) connection between a hot and ground of your selector or your volume pot?


there are a few tests, that can be done with a multimeter connected to the loose end of a cable plugged into your guitar.

by checking the resistance seen there, with the volume at max, then with the volume reduced, can tell you much about the health of your wiring, before you even take your guitar back apart.

unfortunately, it's Friday, and someone else will have to talk you through that.

else i'll continue with this next week.



cheers,

unk