Stealth tele with everything

[dannyhill]

"3) I might remove the tape around the holes in the cavity where the screws from the neck pup enter to make sure it really is floating."


"I don't know what you mean by this. Is this where you are using the HB sized single? If so, have you ensured that the cover of that pup is not tied to ground (that is, if it has a separate shield, the shield should be tied to the cover, but not the signal ground)?"

The neck pup is a single coil sized strat pup, no ground plate. It had no ground connection for jumper connection to the black ("ground") lead. The bobbin is resin so there should be no path to the cavity copper foil it is screwed in via the screws.

[dannyhill]

OK, so another 4 steps forwards, 3 back. Removing the cavity copper that contacts the guard across the two pieces of foil on the guard didnt seem to help.

After I had to go through the red wires again to fix a few bad contacts I taped it all down and back on again. This time I noticed that the cut outs (neck in serial/middle and neck in middle) occur ONLY when the part of the guard over the control cavity makes contact AND the guard over the pup cavities (maybe just the neck cavity part) makes contact. If one was lifted a few mm or the other, no problem, except the neck was noisy when I lifted that part as it it has no pup cover and no grounding as such. So its obviously not a short from a wire due to flexing when putting guard on.

So what is going on?
Being methodical we really need to ask what is going on in the circuit when the series/middle position or neck position are chosen that does not happen in any of the others?
Newey?
From your text you said:
"The tone pot is a last-minute addition. It has no effect when 'bridge only' is selected, so you can go straight to a solo position with no lost highs. In the 'neck only' and 'neck parallel with bridge' it acts as a master tone, and in the series setting it acts only on the neck pickup, whilst also allowing highs from the bridge pickup to bleed through."

I notice that there is some synergy between the neck and parallel positions. Could it be that with the P/P pulled out I am going from serial to parallel and not parallel to serial? What difference would I hear with and without strings on?

What would happen if I swap the neck pup wires around?

Anyway unless there is a problem elsewhere which only become apparent when shielding comes together which in itself is correctly done, I can always try the two ideas from yesterday:
(2) I copper taped the neck cavity several months back and now it has oxidised. In fact, I'm not sure it makes a good ohmic contact with the rest of the copper which runs through to the bridge pup cavity and into the control cavity. Might be worth soldering a few of the joints?
(3) I might remove the tape around the holes in the cavity where the screws from the neck pup enter to make sure it really is floating. I have in mind when I get this all sorted out to suspend this from the guard by drilling a couple of holes for the bolts once I'm confident about everything working 100%.

Cheers,

Daniel

[newey]

So what is going on?

Well, if we knew the answer to that, this wouldn't still be ongoing!

What would happen if I swap the neck pup wires around?

The neck pup would be out-of-phase with the bridge.

copper taped the neck cavity several months back and now it has oxidised. In fact, I'm not sure it makes a good ohmic contact with the rest of the copper which runs through to the bridge pup cavity and into the control cavity. Might be worth soldering a few of the joints?

I have previously answered that one. If your meter shows either no resistance or a very low resistance, then there is continuity. Again, my best advice at this point is to remove the shielding entirely.

So its obviously not a short from a wire due to flexing when putting guard on.

I disagree. One of more of the lines carrying your signal has to be contacting the shielding and shorting, otherwise there wouldn't be any difference between having it on or off.

Could it be that with the P/P pulled out I am going from serial to parallel and not parallel to serial? What difference would I hear with and without strings on?

If it's wired as per the diagram, pulling the knob up should give you the series setting. With the strings off, you can also tell the difference with your meter as the resistances of the 2 pickups will multiply in series.

From your text you said:
"The tone pot is a last-minute addition. It has no effect when 'bridge only' is selected, so you can go straight to a solo position with no lost highs. In the 'neck only' and 'neck parallel with bridge' it acts as a master tone, and in the series setting it acts only on the neck pickup, whilst also allowing highs from the bridge pickup to bleed through."

I never said that, that was pete1234 who originally posted this. When I diagrammed his schematic, I used a Master tone control instead. In any event, the tone control has nothing to do with your problem(s).