nice job Sonic, can see you have put in the effort in sanding it flat nice shine nice and level 👍
nice job Sonic, can see you have put in the effort in sanding it flat nice shine nice and level 👍
Thanks Colin, I'll check out your pics against mine and have another look at the pots after work.
Cheers Phrozin, I'm happy enough with the finish for this one. I definitely have some ideas on how to improve my setup for the next one.
I just jumped on the computer and compared, your caps are a reflection of mine - so the same as the diagram, with the cap soldered to the opposite post. I went to check it out with my multimeter last night but the battery is dead. I'm thinking this is the problem from my very limited understanding of how its supposed to work. It's 5 mins to swap it around so I'll try that first.Originally Posted by colin2121
Ok, well I switched the capacitors to the opposite posts. The tone controls now work...but in reverse. So 0 is maximum treble and 10 is maximum bass.
The knobs are kind of the wrong way round as well, with the one near the jack changing the neck pickup and the one closest to the volume controlling the Humbucker. The sound out of the Humbucker has definitely improved, so thats good.
I guess swapping the pot positions around will be easy enough. Does anyone have any thoughts on the reversal of the pots themselves?
I'm not really bothered, at least it works now, but would be good to know if there is a fix for that anyway.
I dressed a couple fo frets that were buzzing again. Seems perfect now. I actually can't believe how low the action is on this thing. Its better than plenty I've played in guitar stores. I'm not really an expert when it comes to tone, but the overall sound out of this is really impressive. Can't wait to get some decent strings on it.
Yeah, I think I'll do the string trees, new strings, give another quick polish and call it done.
Your tone pots should have worked correctly as they were originally. I can't see any reason for them not to unless there was/is something wrong with the connections to the selector switch or something wasn't making contact within the switch itself - but is now.
If you look at the yellow wire connection to the output jack. you can see a couple of loose wire whiskers poking out from the connection. I'd trim them off, just be be nice and neat as they are pointing towards where the jack barrel will be. They look too short to touch at the moment, but if the connection lug gets knocked at all in the future, they may well do.
Yes, I can see I'm going to have get some fresh batteries in my multimeter and work out exactly what is going on.If I do that i can at least definitively confirm which lug I should be connecting the cap to.
I was under the impression that if it was the wrong one you would get a very sharp drop off rather than a gradual easing of the trebles, and that doesn't seem to be the case at the moment - they are just working in reverse to what you would normally expect.
The factory solder points look agricultural, but serviceable. I have double checked all mine (I did this before changing the capacitor connection and there was no change) so the culprit may be the switch itself. I do find it weird that I was getting sound out of all of the pickups and the switch appeared to be working correctly (in terms of swapping between Neck, neck/middle, middle, middle/HB and HB on its own) but turning the tone pots did nothing.
It isn't unheard of for an inadvertent bump or tug on the wiring during install to change something and that may be what has happened. I though I was Ok with it, but its just going to annoy me now until I work out exactly what is happening.
With a linear tone pot, you won't get a sharp drop-off, just reversed operation. You'd get the sharp drop-off at one end with swapped connections and an audio taper pot.
There are several ways you can wire a tone pot. All you need is the pot acting as a variable resistor with the capacitor in series, and the cap and the pot connected between the signal and ground. You can have the cap first or the pot first.
Hey Simon. Yep I spent a lot of time reading and taking the trouble to try and understand how it's supposed to be. You are correct, it switched the direction, but putting it back the other way it wouldn't work at all. Even in the swapped direction the adjustment could be best described as 'subtle'.
Anyway, I did some extensive messing around and investigating this evening...
I tested one of the pots with the multimeter and could easily see the swapping direction. Double checked all the soldering connections and the switch layout.
Having the tone controls with the front running the rear pick ups and vice versa was also annoying my so I pulled the 'tone' pots out and swapped them around, moving the bridge earth to the rear most post again after realising I had effectively removed one of the pots from the circuit. I put the capacitors back how they were originally. Now the rear most one is working great, but no action from the front one. I remembered reading in Kicks thread about the A and B pots and one of my tone pots does look different to the other. The volume also only seems to work for about a 3rd of the dial - although this depends what its plugged into, far more noticeable on my computer interface than the little practice amp in the shed.....
So I pulled them off and it does seem like I have a B pot wired for volume and an A for tone, which is the one that isn't working.
So I'll swap that around tomorrow and see if it helps.
This axe looks awesome mate. Great job!
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