dogbot
Full Member
Posts: 8,738
|
Post by dogbot on Feb 19, 2023 11:34:49 GMT
It sounds like a bit of corrosion/gunk and you’ve cleared it by wiping the potentiometer arm back and forth. I got a load of pedals I made years ago out of the loft and half worked, half didn’t, and the ones that didn’t just needed playing with, pots twisted, tubes removed and re-inserted. Basically did a mechanical turn em off and on again \o/ I think some of the issues might have been wiring on the 5 way switch, which I resoldered. But the cleaner and working it in have definitely helped. Might have a think about selling it now. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2023 11:52:55 GMT
I wish I could do wiring. I've got one that desperately needs it. The one and only time I tried, and I was so confident after watching two YT tutorials, I burned through the insulation of the power cord of the soldering iron and decided it's not for me.
|
|
|
|
Post by mothercruncher on Feb 20, 2023 14:35:38 GMT
It’s something that needs a knack, and I see a lot of people doing it badly- dropping blobs of solder onto he iron and putting it on to whatever they’re joining, etc. But once you’ve got it you’re away. My most complicated pedal has over a hundred components, worked first time. But I burnt a lot of circuit boards and melted random shit on the way while learning.
|
|
|
|
Post by elstoof on Feb 20, 2023 16:19:05 GMT
My first job when I left school was wiring up cables and installing recording studio equipment, patch bays and all that analogue stuff. Put me in good stead for this hobby of guitar building. My most recent project was an amp which was probably more convex than anything I ever did in the day job  speaking of the guitar building hobby, I’ve joined a local community woodworking shop so I’m off there next week to knock together a few templates for my scratch builds 😎 |
|
|
|
Post by mothercruncher on Feb 20, 2023 18:35:51 GMT
That’s lovely- a point to point amp is definitely not the cards- I fancy the Tweed flavour from ampmaker- www.ampmaker.com/shop/wf-55/At the moment I’m finishing up an Acapulco Gold, half way through a Lemon Drop and waiting for two components to finish a Noisey Cricket mini amp. When you can build most stuff for a fraction of the price I’m like a kid in a sweet shop 🤪 |
|
|
|
Post by elstoof on Feb 20, 2023 18:46:31 GMT
Ampmaker’s kits are well regarded, I’ve been checking in for the past year hoping he’ll reintroduce the plexi head. I’ve got to pick up a Gibson GA5 kit I had sent to my friend in the US, basically the same circuit as a 5F1. Should have that knocked together by the summer
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2023 16:18:10 GMT
Right, as it appears there are a few people here who know what they are doing with putting stuff together and wiring etc, opinions sought and welcomed please/thanks! If you have a minute, the embedded video will display the issues practically. Forgive the blooze-dad hackery please. It's my default because I'm crap. I love this guitar but didn't like the way the pickups mixed in the middle position. I took it to my local tech who I've used for years. Swapped out the neck pickup 250K pots for 500k (both pots). Asked for 50s wiring. All OK, but the neck pickup became so intermittent that it was unusable. It was retired from band use. Had a few issues with this guy's work (used to be stellar) and didn't want to take it back. Plus covid restrictions were in full force. Some time later, I take it to a tech based in a prominent Manchester musical shop. Locals will know the one. I was told my assumption about a bad pot were wrong and that the neck humbucker 'had failed'. How was never revealed. They kept it for a week and said they'd rebuilt the pickup several times. It came back working OK, and I'd asked for the factory wiring to be restored. However it sounded out of phase in the middle position! Then the intermittent thing happened again! I believe they've either re-built the neck pickup with the magnet accidentally flipped or have accidentally wired to the wrong lug somewhere. The volume pot and pickup has the same old issues as before which crept in over time. Questions - does it sound out of phase in the middle position to you, and is it likely to be (as I think) volume pot related. If anyone takes the time to read all this and/or watch the vid and reply, many thanks! youtu.be/J0Q8gyS2XEg |
|
|
|
Post by elstoof on Feb 25, 2023 16:34:48 GMT
Show us a picture of the wiring please
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2023 17:07:33 GMT
Not sure I'm hugely confident of dismantling the thing without a few pointers sorry. One of the issues is it's not like a Tele Deluxe where the bridge pickup is mounted to the guard, it's got a traditional Tele bridge.
There are four screws at the back near the saddles and three around the bridge pickup. Do those three just mount the pickup or are they holding the bridge itself on?
I'm also not sure how much slack there is under there for the jack and the switch? Should I be able to remove the pickguard and just flip it over still wired up or is this going to necessitate severing connections?
|
|
|
|
Post by elstoof on Feb 25, 2023 17:40:32 GMT
Don’t take it apart if you aren’t comfortable doing so. The intermittent cutting out of volume put, if I was a beating man, is because they’ve bent the lug back and soldered it to the casing. Very common way of doing it as it’s quick and easy, however this often warps the track and you end up with this exact issue.
The pick-up phase thing is odd, I’d want to know exactly what they mean by rebuilding the pick-up several times - they’re simple things, a magnet and a length of wire. The only thing that can fail is the wire, you don’t “rebuild” then you just rewind with new wire, and you don’t need to do it several times if you know what you’re doing.
It’s most likely out of phase because they’ve wired it wrong, humbuckers often come with 4 wires for doing coil splits and you need to join them a certain way for 50s wiring. All the manufacturers use different colour codes for their wires so following a Gibson diagram for a fender pickup won’t work even though they both have black/white/red/green wires coming out of them
|
|
|
|
Post by elstoof on Feb 25, 2023 17:46:33 GMT
An example of the different wiring for each maker  |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2023 17:55:30 GMT
I've taken it apart, and realised I didn't even need to do the bridge. I now can't put the thing back together, the mass of wires underneath the pots won't fit back in the routing channel naturally. FFS 😂
Yes it looks like the grounding has been done as mentioned. I must say the whole lot looks pretty messy under there, from the routing itself (which judging by this Epiphone do tidier on guitars half the price) to the birds nest wiring itself. There's actually a piece of card jammed into one of the routs where I presume they carved too deeply.
I'll try to upload some photos but good luck following it - I'm thinking just buy a tidy pre-built loom and find the local place with the best rep to install it. It's money I'd rather spend on other hobby related stuff but the guitar is too nice to leave as it is. I watched a YT video today from Six String Supplies wiring up a Tele Deluxe loom and just visually it was night and day. Pics to follow.
Edit: re-building the pickup - I presume they mean 're-winding'. He'd talked about potential shorts or broken wire. He never then advised me if he found it.
|
|
|
|
Post by elstoof on Feb 25, 2023 18:02:29 GMT
I wouldn’t trust a guitar shop to rewire a pickup tbh, I doubt any of them would even know how to do it even if they had to machinery on site.
If you’re in Manchester I’d get in touch with Steve Robinson about redoing the wiring, based in sale. Wiring isn’t hard to do a nice job of, especially on simple circuits like a guitar
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2023 19:15:21 GMT
Thanks. I've had one of those days where nothing seems to go right or easily. This has extended to forgetting the process to insert images, so you'll just have to take my word for it that it's a complete mess. I'll have a look at that recommendation (Jack's Instrument Services was the other name I had in mind) and thanks - having watched a Six String Supplies video on a Tele Deluxe wiring the difference between what it is and could look like is vast. This thing needs gutting and re-starting one way or another.
EDIT: To address the tech/shop thing, they aren't actually belonging to the shop, they are independent and rent the space in there. It's an odd setup and they don't let you in the office so you have to shout over the shop floor noise to discuss your issues!
|
|
|
|
Post by mothercruncher on Feb 25, 2023 20:51:47 GMT
Middle does sound out of phase to my ears.
Hmm, if they’re claiming they rewound it then they may have done so and reversed the direction, then wired the guitar back up as it was before. Or, truly incompetent, wound as factory but wired the two wires the wrong way around.
The pots- swapping to 500k wouldn’t per se change *how* they mix- it’s just, by default, keeping more highs than with 250k at the “10” position. Valid option, of course- I’d rather have a fuller range and chose myself.
It’d be very easy to see if the pot was faulty, but it’d need to be removed and two of the pins (middle and either of the sides) checked with a multimeter to read values as it was turned. They aren’t too expensive- maybe get someone to swap one in though?
Potentially, there’s a manky wire on it and the tiny amount of movement is causing things to cut out, but given it looks like it’s consistently dead *at the same point* v much looks like Els is correct and it’s the sweep of the track. Depending on confidence you can actually dismantle pots and bend the sweeper a touch so it makes contact, but I’d just go with a new pot for robustness.
|
|
|
|
Post by mothercruncher on Feb 25, 2023 20:57:21 GMT
I fixed a friends Jag last month and, fuck me, there was a lot of excess wire length in there. Twice as much, for some runs three times as much as needed. Given Fender’s use of any old caps to save money over the years you’d think being a bit neater with the wire and saving yards and yards of it across guitar builds would be seen as desirable, but apparently not.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2023 22:03:32 GMT
The 500K thing was to get a bit more treble frequency on the humbucker which worked . The '50s wiring I'd hoped would make it behave more like a Gibson but I think the pickups are too mismatched. However they have about two sweet spots that make an amazing rhythm tone. Perfect for the soul stuff we play. Now basically I'm going to pay somebody to gut it and make it look more like this: www.homeoftone.co.uk/products/signature-series-pre-wired-telecaster-custom-harness-kitThan this hot mess (finally remembered how to do the images):  Now I know that a difference here is the pickup wires are involved, but I've seen it much tidier than that even then. |
|
|
|
Post by elstoof on Feb 25, 2023 22:14:59 GMT
That’s a spicy meat a ball!
|
|
|
|
Post by elstoof on Feb 25, 2023 22:28:48 GMT
Tbf, shit looking wiring can still work just fine. Obviously that doesn’t though
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 25, 2023 22:42:32 GMT
Tbf, shit looking wiring can still work just fine. Obviously that doesn’t though I get that. But look how it CAN look!  Mine is begging for a short or a break surely. |
|
|
|
Post by elstoof on Feb 25, 2023 23:16:15 GMT
Oh yeah, and it should. all my guitars look like that, obviously
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2023 18:15:20 GMT
Booked in for Friday.
Possibly going for a push pull to have the out of phase still but when I want it, or I might keep it simple TBH to have one less thing to go wrong with it.
I very, very nearly stuck a Cunife WRHB on plastic and probably would have succumbed to madness if anybody had them in stock. Oh well. I'll get one eventually.
|
|
|
|
Post by elstoof on Mar 4, 2023 10:17:29 GMT
|
|
dogbot
Full Member
Posts: 8,738
|
Post by dogbot on Mar 4, 2023 10:58:44 GMT
Nah, you're ok.
|
|
|
|
Post by elstoof on Mar 4, 2023 10:59:37 GMT
What about going halves?
|
|
dogbot
Full Member
Posts: 8,738
|
Post by dogbot on Mar 4, 2023 11:14:15 GMT
Halves is what would be left of me after my Mrs was finished 😁 It's beautiful and looks like a great original example of the most sought after year... But it's either a museum piece or for someone who would make far better use than I. |
|
|
|
Post by clemfandango on Mar 4, 2023 11:32:09 GMT
I wouldn’t trust a guitar shop to rewire a pickup tbh, I doubt any of them would even know how to do it even if they had to machinery on site. If you’re in Manchester I’d get in touch with Steve Robinson about redoing the wiring, based in sale. Wiring isn’t hard to do a nice job of, especially on simple circuits like a guitar I use Steve! He’s brilliant |
|
|
|
Post by elstoof on Mar 4, 2023 11:45:10 GMT
It’s going straight into Joe Bonamassa’s vault, let’s not kid ourselves
|
|
dogbot
Full Member
Posts: 8,738
|
Post by dogbot on Mar 4, 2023 11:54:06 GMT
It’s going straight into Joe Bonamassa’s vault, let’s not kid ourselves Yeah. Presumably it's priced with that in mind. |
|
|
|
Post by RadicalRex on Mar 4, 2023 12:23:36 GMT
Tbf, shit looking wiring can still work just fine. Behold my craftsmanship  |
|
