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Post by eljib on Oct 7, 2006 17:15:17 GMT -5
Hi gang,
I just finished installing a GFS Vintage alnico neck pup in my tele. Before stringing up I plugged in to make sure I had everything right. There was -slightly- more hum than the stock pup but I figured it was due to the fact that the stock wires had a shield. The hum went away when I touched the cover (or any other metal part, since they were all common with the shielding) so I was confident I hadn't reversed my wires.
All strung up and plugged in: Bridge and Middle sounded exactly the same as each other, and the neck was audible, but so so quiet that at first I thought it was just the sound of my strings w/o amplification. I changed to the O/D channel and pumped up the gain, and the sound came across as very tinny and weak, with a lot of upper frequencies that you wouldn't expect from a Tele neck pup.
So, from the sound, I figured it was out of phase, but how can it be out of phase on its own? And if I switch the wires won't that make it hum like crazy? The one thing I did outside the normal installation procedure was switch the gold cover on the GFS for the chrome one on the stock pup, and that went off without a hitch.
I know that if I tear the whole thing apart I might be able to find the reason its all messed up. But then again I might not; I've never heard of a half-dead pup. Plus, I've got practice tonight and I need that axe to be up and running, so I haven't got much time to do a whole tear down.
Anyone have any ideas as to what caused this, or where I should start looking? If I can do this without wasting a brand new set of strings that would be cool.
Thanks, Aaron
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Post by JohnH on Oct 7, 2006 17:44:10 GMT -5
eljib
By middle, I assume you mean the mid stting on a tele (ie neck/bridge in parallel), rather than an extra mid pup?
Sounds like the neck pup is not wired right or faulty. If you have a multimeter, measure resistance across the jack, with volume and tone on full, and in each switch setting.
With two 6k pups on a Tele, you should get about 6k, 3k, 6k when you do this. If the neck-only reading is a lot higher, with volume at full, then it is not connected properly
John
BTW - I have a similar GFS vintage set on my Strat - good pups.
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Post by JohnH on Oct 7, 2006 17:55:10 GMT -5
Further thought - wild guess, but the symptoms are most like a problem with the grounding (because of the hum issue) on that neck pup, maybe a bad or missing joint. As you say, phasing would not explain the outcome, and its only a two wire pup.
I'm going out for a couple of hours but Ill check in when I get back
John
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Post by eljib on Oct 7, 2006 19:12:23 GMT -5
Okay, got some readings on my digital VOM.
Bridge reads 8.63 on the 20K setting, and 0.009 on the 2M setting (I needed the 2M setting because that's the only one the the neck would register on). N+B is almost exactly the same (slightly higher), and the neck varies (?!) between 0.409 and 0.528.
I am lost.
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Post by JohnH on Oct 7, 2006 20:11:44 GMT -5
OK, its pretty clear that your neck pup is 'open circuit', ie that it is not connected at one or both ends. You should get into the wiring and measure resistance directly between the two wires from the neck pup. You should get 5k to 9k, on your 20k Ohms setting. If that checks out, then the pup is OK and the fault is in the wiring, ie at the connection of the neck hot to the selector switch, or the other neck wire to the ground. To find out which, try resistance between neck grounded wire and output jack hot, and then neck pup hot wire and output jack ground.
But if you measure direct between the neck pup wires and you only get that very high resistance (which is just that of he volume control, ie about 0.5M = 500k, then the neck pup is stuffed.
good luck
John
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Post by JohnH on Oct 7, 2006 20:54:16 GMT -5
one more possibility when you measure between the two neck pup leads. If you get a very low resistance, then they are proably both somehow connected to ground, or both to hot, rather than one to each J
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Post by eljib on Oct 8, 2006 7:54:55 GMT -5
thanks heaps. I'm checking it out and will report back.
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Post by eljib on Oct 8, 2006 9:48:21 GMT -5
I'm screwed. The pup's dead. I'm sure it's been too long since I got it to ask for a replacment, so I'm gonna tear off the windings and have a go at winding it myself. That should give me plenty of opportunities to make things even worse.
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Post by JohnH on Oct 8, 2006 15:29:11 GMT -5
Thats bad, bad news. Just to confirm its the pup, if you havn't already, better take it completely out of the guitar and check again the resistance beteen the two pup wires. If so, maybe GFS could be persuaded to help you out? Comments from anyone else?
John
Its spooky, but that exact same problem on my old neck pup was why I replaced the pups with my new GFS vintage alnicos - which have been great, with no problems.
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Post by eljib on Oct 9, 2006 0:02:26 GMT -5
Already pulled it out to check. It's definitely the windings.
Already cut off the windings, because it has been at least 4 months since I ordered it and I already left positive feedback, so how could I complain now? Plus I removed the cover (flawlessly, btw) and Jay at GFS would certainly blame shoddy work as the reason for the malfunction.
Were you the one with the hondo that needed those new GFS pups? If you are then this is double spooky, because I used some GFS in a friends hondo strat when the stock pups went on the fritz. As usual, they sounded great (although they weren't quite as wide as the hondos)
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Post by JohnH on Oct 9, 2006 1:07:31 GMT -5
thats right! It was me. It's like deja-vue all over again.
John
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Post by UnklMickey on Oct 10, 2006 17:40:18 GMT -5
...It's like deja-vue all over again.... now, who's channeling Yogi Beara? i recognized the possiblity that this might be the same kind of problem John had months ago just by reading the first post. but i still read the whole thread. " you know, you can observe a lot, just by looking."
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Post by ChrisK on Oct 10, 2006 18:07:22 GMT -5
Or like vuja-de if you know that you've never been there before.
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