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I just completed a ST1-JR for my son. After making all the connections I'm not getting any sound when tapping the pick ups (plugged in to amp). Can anyone help me troubleshoot?
I've connected the hot and earth to the jack as shown, and earthed the wire to the spring plate at the back cavity of the guitar. Any advice? Thanks so much.
Have you tested it with the jack sitting out of the body like in the above pic? Often shielding around the jack can short onto the hot tip/arm when it flexes out with the plug inserted. The same can sometimes occur with a switch edge or pot lug shorting onto the cavity shielding when you screw the scatchplate down.
If either of those doesn't appear to be the cause then check for any solder dags or stray wire strands shorting between pot lugs etc, sometimes they can be very difficult to see. If all else fails then we'll probably need some closer pics of the wiring, pots and switch to see if anything looks amiss..
The screen from the output jack cable looks quite long where it connects to the volume pot. It's possible this is touching a signal lug on the volume pot with the scratchplate on.
Note that you'll need to fully copper tape the underside of the scratchplate, otherwise the shielding in the cavities will be wasted. You need to make as complete an enclosure (Faraday cage) as possible.
All good advice from WB and Simon.
And +1 on Simon's comment about the shielding on the pickguard, but nice tidy job on your cavity shielding! Good work!
The only thing I'd add based on what we can see, is re-flow all your solder joints. You don't need to add more solder, just hit them with the tip of a good hot iron just long enough to melt the existing solder.
A cold solder joint can invisible to the naked eye, but can raise hell with the signal path.