So the only thing I can see is that the capacitors appear to be on the opposite side to what is in the diagram.
Its confusing because they are also upside down compared to the drawing, but if you rotate it around they are definitely flipped. Would this be causing my issue?
The diagram is incorrect with its cap placement, your caps are connected to the correct lugs (middle and left as per photo above).
It's a bit difficult to see if anything is wrong in your pics as it needs a bit more illumination and different angles and close-ups on the pots. However, I'd be looking at the tone pot closest to the jack and checking that the cap's legs haven't been squashed down so they short between the middle and left lug or pot casing etc.
Scott.
Hi Weirdbits, thanks for the response.
Yeah I thought something like that as well, but I can't se any obvious damage, apart from the general squashedness. Some more pics, hope they help.
nice job Sonic, can see you have put in the effort in sanding it flat nice shine nice and level 👍
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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.
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.
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