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Post by leftysixsoul on Dec 16, 2012 10:36:35 GMT -5
Hi all, I'm new to this forum and a noob to guitar electronics in general. I've successfully installed pickups and pots to my Telecaster, as well as replaced the wiring. My son's guitar, on the other hand, is a different story. He has a Peavey starter guitar with a 1 SC/1 HB configuration. The pots are connected to a pickguard that appears to be shielded. The stock pickups were really cheap and low output, so I decided to replace them. I picked up another single coil and an Ibanez AH1 humbucker, along with a 500K mini-pot for the volume and a 250K mini for the tone. I used a little green cap from Radio Shack for the tone pot. Everything went well wiring the pickups, but once we got it back together, the guitar was cutting out with no sound. We took the pickguard off and found that when the bottom of the volume pot (directly underneath the lugs), would touch the shielding, the sound would cut off. When I lifted the lugs, the sound was fine. I gently lifted the lugs of the volume pot and that seemed to fix the problem, but when we got it back together, we noticed the problem again. It was very slight, but it happened again. We took the pickguard off again only to have the humbucker stop working and emitting a loud hum. The single coil worked fine, but the humbucker not a all; only hum. I'm thinking these issues have to do with the grounding and shielding of the guitar and seems to stem from the volume pot. I was worried I somehow fried the humbucker, but I'm hoping this is a simple fix. This is like the father/son project gone wrong If you guys have any advice, it would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance.
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Post by cynical1 on Dec 16, 2012 11:11:23 GMT -5
...We took the pickguard off and found that when the bottom of the volume pot (directly underneath the lugs), would touch the shielding, the sound would cut off. When I lifted the lugs, the sound was fine. Sounds like a common problem. Sounds like another common scenario. Without seeing it my first guess is you were right to assume the problem was the signal shorting out to the shielding. The first thing I'd look at are your solder connections. They may have had issues prior to assembly and they may have let go after being "manipulated". One thing I do on all guitars and basses is shield the entire cavity and pickguard, if present, and use a star ground to the shielding. I also take electrical tape and cover the shielding around pots and switches to make sure a tight fit doesn't produce undesirable results. Guitar wiring, in what appears to be your case, is passive. Unless your humbucker had issues prior to assembly, I'd say with certainty that you didn't fry it with your work to date. If it were me, I'd check all solder connections, if you have a meter then check the pot to see if it went the way of all things, shield the entire cavity, run a star ground and put some electrical tape on the shielding that are close enough to switches and pots that may make contact with said shielding on re-assembly. Others will most certainly chime in soon so stay tuned. Happy Trails Cynical One
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Post by leftysixsoul on Dec 16, 2012 11:44:24 GMT -5
Thanks, C1. I checked the solder joints and all seemed to be pretty good. It all sounded great until the volume pot touched the shielding. Like I said, I'm definitely a novice at guitar electronics, so I really don't understand the whole shielding/grounding thing just yet. I read the sticky Stew Mac link and reading other material to gain better knowledge.
I'm relieved to hear what you said about the humbucker. The wires coming from it are red, white and bare. I used the red as the lead, bare as the ground and just taped off the white. The wires are really frail so I thought of splicing them into 24K. Not sure if this would help..
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Post by sumgai on Dec 16, 2012 14:07:30 GMT -5
lss, The wires coming from it are red, white and bare. I used the red as the lead, bare as the ground and just taped off the white. Mind if I ask where you got the idea that taping off one of the signal leads was a good idea? Sorry, but what's a "24K"? But whatever it is, splicing probably won't help, unless there's an issue of wire length..... HTH sumgai
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Post by JohnH on Dec 16, 2012 14:28:30 GMT -5
If there's a red and a white wire, and a bare wire, Id expect the most likley arrangement is that the red and white go to the coils at each end, and the bare is not part of the circuit but gets grounded to provide shielding.
Its well worth getting a cheap multimemter to measure resistance, then, if its like Im saying, youd measure say between about 6k to 10k between red and white. No connection red to bare, and probably none from white to bare. White may already be connected to bare internally though.
Then white and bare would go to ground and and red to hot, or swap red and white to reverse phase if needed.
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Post by leftysixsoul on Dec 16, 2012 15:18:30 GMT -5
lss, The wires coming from it are red, white and bare. I used the red as the lead, bare as the ground and just taped off the white. Mind if I ask where you got the idea that taping off one of the signal leads was a good idea? I read that the red wire was to operate the pickup in full humbucker mode and the white was for coil tapping. I believe it was on the Seymour Duncan board. The humbucker sounded great when it worked...
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Post by newey on Dec 16, 2012 16:25:28 GMT -5
L6S-
Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!
Possible, but usually three-conductor HBs would not use the braided shield as one of the signal-carrying leads. I think the suggestion to check your pot with a meter is a good idea, and to also check the pickup as well, to see for sure how it's wired.
While, as Cyn noted, a pickup cannot be "fried", one can certainly dislodge a coil connection by pulling on the lead during installation/wiring.
Taping off the "sensitive areas" of your cavity under pots and switches is also a good idea.
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Post by leftysixsoul on Dec 18, 2012 10:01:53 GMT -5
Thanks, Newey!!
I got it working, but it's very noisy. I wired the humbucker red to hot, white to ground and bare to ground and it worked, but it was really noisy. I then wired the red and white together to hot and bare to ground and it works as well, but still noisy. The buzz noise seems to lessen by touching the volume knob with my hand. I checked my connections and taped off under the volume pot, but still have noise. And now the tone control isn't working, also.
I'm about to just desolder and start from scratch. I installed new pots, switch, wiring and pickups to my Telecaster with no problems whatsoever. I'm stumped why this is giving me so many problems!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2012 10:56:35 GMT -5
Thanks, Newey!! I got it working, but it's very noisy. I wired the humbucker red to hot, white to ground and bare to ground and it worked, but it was really noisy. I then wired the red and white together to hot and bare to ground and it works as well, but still noisy. The buzz noise seems to lessen by touching the volume knob with my hand. I checked my connections and taped off under the volume pot, but still have noise. And now the tone control isn't working, also. I'm about to just desolder and start from scratch. I installed new pots, switch, wiring and pickups to my Telecaster with no problems whatsoever. I'm stumped why this is giving me so many problems! is the housing of the pup grounded as well? how many wires leave your pup? 4 or 5? man, i wish i could help, but this is a situation we have all been through (and most probably will be again), it is so common to have one contact or miscontact here or there. Wish you fast to solve the problem. maybe some components are stuffed into a small space inside the cavities and make some metal on metal conduct that should not be? And you only see this when you close the pickguard and push them underneath ? this have given me big headaches in the past.
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Post by JohnH on Dec 18, 2012 14:29:42 GMT -5
do you have a multimeter? - you need one! but a cheap yellow one is fine
If so, if you disconnect the red and white, then measure red to white, white to bare and bare to red.
If its like I thought, then then there would be no connection from red or white to bare, and say 6 to 10k red to white.
But if white was indeed a coil tap, you might get, for example, 4k red to white, 4k white to bare and 8k red to bare.
Also, if you tap each pole piece with a screwdriver, do you get the same volume thump, or is one coil a lot louder? - trying to see if it is working with both coils. Note, on an Hb, tapping a shunted or disconnected coil still gives a bit of thump due to magnetic coupling.
john
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