Thanks again, Simon. The headstock has more than 30 coats of Tru Oil and has been sanded up to 7000 grit. I thought I was done with the sanding and Tru Oil. :-( Oh well.. Fortunately I bought the large size bottle and I won't have any other use for it once I'm finished.
Sorry about that. You really needed to apply the decal after about 10 coats, then carried on with the other 20.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, if rather frustrating.
It's getting near the end. I covered the headstock decal with a dozen or so coats of Tru Oil. I think it'll be fine now. I also drilled the few holes that still needed drilling - neck pickup ring and switch plate. I also removed the cover on the neck pickup. IMHO it looks weird to have 1 pickup with a cover and the other pickup without a cover. An added bonus is that now the neck pickup is perfectly placed with the pole pieces right below the strings.
The last steps are the shielding and soldering.
Did all of the soldering today. I followed the wiring diagram that came with the pots.
The bridge pickup works fine but the neck pickup is not functioning. I'm wondering if it's related to my removal of the cover on the neck pickup.
I could use some advice on how to troubleshoot this.
The pickup cover is normally connected to the ground connection on the pickup, to make the cover more effective as a shield. Did you unsolder any connection first? If not, you may have broken the coil connection to the ground wire. Even unsoldering may have left the coil connection loose.
Select the bridge pickup (so the neck pup remains unconnected to the volume and tone pots), then measure the resistance between a pot back and the neck pickup hot connection to the switch. That will give the coil resistance and af its somewhere in the 4k-10kohm region, then the pickup is OK.
If it's open circuit, then the coil has become either become disconnected or a coil wire has been broken in the process of cover removal.
If it's a short circuit, then somehow the coil connections have become linked, possibly with a wisp of loose wire.
Yes. I saw that the center tab on the cover was soldered to the ground. I heated this with a soldering iron while gently pulling off the cover,Originally Posted by Simon Barden
Are either of those repairable or will I need a new pickup
Open circuit - not easily. Short circuit - normally.
Measure first, only worry if it's not correct. One step at a time.
I had a buddy of mine at work help me check everything. He knows a lot more about this stuff than me. We checked everything twice. The pickup is toast. :-(
Tonerider doesn't have a distributor in China so I'll probably have to order another one from Adam and wait another week or so for it to arrive. Oh well, could be worse.
While I'm waiting for my new neck pickup I thought I'd see how a modern bridge looks on the guitar. I swapped the intonation screws from the vintage bridge to get more adjustment.
Although I prefer the style of the modern bridge this one just doesn't match the switch plate and pickup ring. At the risk of sounding like a primadonna I'll say that these are 2 very different shades of black. I don't think I could get used to this.
If anyone knows of another top loading, black, modern bridge that mounts with either 3 or 5 screws please give a shout out.
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