Pickup wiring help

[Iron1]

Yanked the EMG out of this Les Paul, sold it, got a set of gold covered pickups to install and then pulled the Duncan wiring diagram, fired up the soldering iron and went to town.



Now, when I connect it to verify it works, I get sound from both pickups, (less from from the bridge) and when I try to play through clean presets on the Axe FX, I get nothing at all. But I get no-gain sound through the high gain presets. Grabbed one of my Jacksons and all the presets work with it.

I went back through the wiring diagram, verifying I ran them all right, and did, but obviously I did something wrong somewhere in here...

Any ideas of what would create this symptom(s)?

EDIT: and I swapped the pot & input jack back to the none EMG ones, too...

[JJ Rodriguez]

Something shorting a lot of your signal to ground maybe? What's the behaviour of the pots when turning them when you can hear something?

[Iron1]

Something shorting a lot of your signal to ground maybe? What's the behaviour of the pots when turning them when you can hear something?

The volumes both work as they should, but the tones don't do didly squat. Upon deeper post-coffee inspection, I noticed some of the existing wiring has some points of fray/damage and one of the pots has entirely too much solder on it - so I just ordered a new set of pre-wired pots/jack/switch. Guessing the EMG swap in/out/replacement didn't do them any favors and my declining eyesight missed some of the wire damage. Instead of chasing my tail, I'll just replace it all for $10 and move on with life.

[Leon]

Yeah, sounds like a short to ground somewhere. New pots is the way to go. Or, in my case, no pots!

[Iron1]

Ok, I'm convinced this is operator error, but I still can't get this thing right.

Swapped ALL the electronics, except the toggle switch.

Wired it exactly the way it shows in the wiring diagram.

Plugged it in and got sound, tone knobs work, it sounds very rich for no-name pickups and I'm happy.

Then I go to turn the volume off and ... nada.

When I turn the volumes down to zero, they both make the respective pickups sound, smaller (?) and quieter, but neither will silence the guitar completely. Doesn't matter what position the switch is in (it does choose between the 2 pickups, clearly).

Went back thru, un/re soldered several connections, testing along the way. Managed to create and eliminate ground noises, but no matter what I do I can't get the volume pots to totally silence the guitar.

I chock this up to having never done a Les Paul before even though I've swapped dozens of pickups over the years (never had more than 1 volume, 1 switch, 2 tones, but usually only mess with 1 V, 1 T guitars).

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[JJ Rodriguez]

Can you take a pic of the guts?

[Iron1]

Can you take a pic of the guts?

Just don't judge my less than stellar soldering skills.

[Leon]

Looks like one of your tone pots isn't grounded, right off the bat.


edit: Oh wait, that's just the bridge ground wire. Nevermind

[JJ Rodriguez]

I never judge someone's soldering ability by the back of the pots, because fuck soldering to the back of the pots I'll look over it in a little bit and see if anything pops out at me.

My first thought is that if everything works/sounds as expected you might just have a bad pot or something that can't go all the way down to 0.

EDIT: Oh wait, both pots are doing it, yeah that points to a wiring issue.

[JJ Rodriguez]

Are those non standard pickup wires/shielded cable you're using? Having a hard time following what's going on. Is one of those thick red shielded cables from 1 pickup, and the thick black shielded cable coming from the other?

[Iron1]

Are those non standard pickup wires/shielded cable you're using? Having a hard time following what's going on. Is one of those thick red shielded cables from 1 pickup, and the thick black shielded cable coming from the other?

Yes.

[JJ Rodriguez]

Don't see anything soldered to the right lug on the volume pot on the right, looks like it should be going to ground. Is that the case or am I missing something?

[Iron1]

Don't see anything soldered to the right lug on the volume pot on the right, looks like it should be going to ground. Is that the case or am I missing something?

The diagram has it bare.

[JJ Rodriguez]

Think we found your problem in the diagram it's bent and soldered to the back of the pot which is a way a lot of people do it.

[Iron1]

So bend it over and solder it down?

[JJ Rodriguez]

That or just solder a wire from it (and the other one for that matter) to any of your grounding points.

[Iron1]

Fixed! You da man, J.J.! I owe you a 6 pack of your favorite beverage. Now, off to Reverb it goes before I continue to fall in love with the Black Sabbath clean tone that drips from it...

[JJ Rodriguez]

No worries, glad to help. It helps I've probably spent more time fucking with my guitars/gear than actually playing them

[Iron1]

Well, at least you use your super powers for good.