Volume pot does not change volume (Tele)

[McCreed]

That's a head-scratcher... It all looks correct to me. The cap/ground joint looks much better too.

My only suggesions are diagnostic not really a fix.

1) I would remove the treble bleed and see if the pot behaviour changes. (maybe the wrong value resistor got put in there and is affecting the taper)

2) completely desolder the volume pot and check the taper with a multimeter. Maybe it is just a junk pot. It does happen, and I've had it happen once (in about 17 years of doing this stuff).
I think CTS Logarithmic pots are around 90/10% split, meaning at the halfway point in rotation, you should read approximately 90% of the total resistance.

[Joe Garfield]

Edit: I think I was mistaken again - sorry, trying to learn and help at the same time. It's confusing because there are so many variations of essentially the same thing. I just can't wrap my head around pulling the signal to tone from the volume INPUT rather than the OUTPUT. It seems like the signal can bypass the volume pot.

Here's a schematic from Fralin Pickups. I flipped it upside down to help align with your setup. It's basically what you have but tone pulls from the volume OUTPUT.

[chunkosauras]

Using the same set of pickups for my LP kit atm. Sorry to hear about the issues, i know it wont effect a tele build but the pickups use diff capacitors on mine. .47 for the p90 and .22 for the rolling mill.
Im a wiring novice so prob talking rubbish. Hope you get sorted.


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[davidxw]

Thanks again all for the help - this afternoon after discovering that there was very little change in resistance between the volume input and output terminals as the pot was turned I snipped out the treble bleed bits (as they were the only other things in that part of the circuit) and that's fixed the problem. I probably should try to figure out exactly what's going on with the treble bleed circut but I'll leave that for another time.

1) I would remove the treble bleed and see if the pot behaviour changes. (maybe the wrong value resistor got put in there and is affecting the taper.

Yes, this did the trick! Also as you suggested my next step was going to desolder everything from the pot and test.

Edit: I think I was mistaken again - sorry, trying to learn and help at the same time. It's confusing because there are so many variations of essentially the same thing. I just can't wrap my head around pulling the signal to tone from the volume INPUT rather than the OUTPUT. It seems like the signal can bypass the volume pot.

Here's a schematic from Fralin Pickups. I flipped it upside down to help align with your setup. It's basically what you have but tone pulls from the volume OUTPUT.

Yes, I'm a bit confused by this too, however I did find this article which explains some of the differences between 50s, 60s and modern wiring which helped. Also as you've said there are many ways of wiring components into what effectively are the same circuit which doesn't help when you are learning and troubleshooting!

(thanks also for flipping your picture

Using the same set of pickups for my LP kit atm. Sorry to hear about the issues, i know it wont effect a tele build but the pickups use diff capacitors on mine. .47 for the p90 and .22 for the rolling mill.
Im a wiring novice so prob talking rubbish. Hope you get sorted.

Funnny you should mention this - after putting the control plate back in I was cleaning up all the packaging that had accumulated in my parts box and only just noticed that a different tone cap was suggested for each of these pickups. I only have one tone pot so maybe that's something else I can play with another time.

[McCreed]

Well that's a good result.
If you haven't chucked the resistor in the bin already, have a look at the bands and see what the value is.

I can never remember just by looking at them, I have to reference a chart nearly every time. Might even be worth clipping it out and measuring it with your multimeter. The whole thiong would make me very curious with a need to know!

FWIW, if you still are going to put in a treble bleed, I find just a single .001uf cap works well (102 code).

[davidxw]

Well that's a good result.
If you haven't chucked the resistor in the bin already, have a look at the bands and see what the value is.

I can never remember just by looking at them, I have to reference a chart nearly every time. Might even be worth clipping it out and measuring it with your multimeter. The whole thiong would make me very curious with a need to know!

FWIW, if you still are going to put in a treble bleed, I find just a single .001uf cap works well (102 code).

Yep, I'll definitely have a closer look, and thanks for the suggestion. Will report back if I find anything interesting!

[davidxw]

I've checked the resistor on the treble bleed circuit (measured and colour code), and it's 150 ohms rather than 150K ohms as advertised in the "kit". I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure that was the cause of the problem ...

[davidxw]

OK, I'm starting to doubt myself now. Pitbull advertised their "capacitor and resistor fidelity upgrade" as having a 150k ohm resistor, but I'm pretty sure I got a 150 ohm resistor. This is their picture, which I also think is 150 ohms - am I completely misreading the bands/code (I know the colours aren't great but I would have thought the multiplier would have been much higher for 150k (yellow))?

[McCreed]

What are the band colours from left to right with the gold band on the right?

Using the 4 band system (as shown) 150k ohm should be Brown, Green, Yellow, Gold*. (*depending on tolerance)

4 band 150 ohm = Brown, Green, Brown, Gold. (which is what the picture kind of looks like, but hard to pick if the second band is green)



edit to add:

5 band would be: 150k ohm = Brown, Green, Black, Orange, [Tolerance value varies]

150 ohm = Brown, Green, Black, Black, [Tolerance value varies]

[davidxw]

What are the band colours from left to right with the gold band on the right?
4 band 150 ohm = Brown, Green, Brown, Gold. (which is what the picture kind of looks like, but hard to pick if the second band is green)

Yes, that's what I thought and even though it's hard to pick the second band the third band is definitely not yellow!