Please help me troubleshoot my single cut wiring (switch not working right?)

[ThatCluelessGerman]

Hey folks,
I'm about to finally finish my July guitar (lol), but I think I got a bad solder joint.

It was working for a brief moment yesterday, then I heard a crackling noise and after that... it stopped working.
That means that the NECK pickup is still working as intended, with the switch in the neck position. NO sound at all in the middle or bridge position.

I have already resoldered the whole thing yesterday, changing every pot and most cables. I have no replacement switch so I kept it for now, but I need help how to find the problem.

The pots are all at half position, so nothing is rolled off and I should hear something.

I have a multimeter. How do I proceed now? I don't want to to upload a photo and ask you to find the error for me, I'd really love to get some hints how to diagnose and fix the problem myself.

The wiring diagram I was following: https://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-co...m4Pot%20v5.pdf

Where and how would I now best start to search for the error? What would cause the neck pickup to work fine in its own position, but not in the middle? Does the bridge pickup have a short somewhere that causes the neck pickup to be shorted out, too, in the center position, or does it relate to the switch?

I appreciate your help, thank you =)

[Simon Barden]

It sounds like either the switch has broken (that type have a habit of just failing completely, and not becoming intermittent and crackly at first), or a wire has moved and you've got a short to ground on the neck pickup. If you've used the braided screened cables, don't forget that the braid is ground, and if that touches a signal connection, you'll ground it out

I'd always fit a better quality (Switchcraft) switch, especially on a hollow body where it's not easy to replace.

Put a guitar lead in the jack socket, turn all the volumes and tone knobs up fully and measure the resistance across the T(ip) and S(leeve) of the other end of the lead. You should be getting the normal pickup resistance value when you select the neck pickup, probably somewhere between 6k and 9k ohms.

In the middle and bridge positions, you'll either find:

1) A dead short, maybe 1 ohm maximum, which indicates a wiring short to ground.
2) Open circuit, which indicates a broken switch. Unlikely to be a broken bridge pickup wire as you should get a sound in the middle position in that instance.

But it does sound very much like a failed switch to me.

[ThatCluelessGerman]

Hey Simon,
thank you VERY MUCH, this helps a lot!

It's not the hollow body guitar with the braided wire, it's the one before, where I asked all sorts of questions about the neck fitting, surface polishing etc... I was finally able to put it together. The wiring was done with some regular unshielded cables.

The advice with the jack socket is very good, exactly what I'm looking for. I'll give it a go!

[ThatCluelessGerman]

Okay, so far, no luck.

I have measured the tip and the sleeve of the jack and got a reading in all 3 positions.

I measured the pots itself and I get 12k ohm on both pots. I measured the tone pots and they also seem to work fine, the values increase and decrease with rolling the pots. They both are around the same ballpark, so no big difference between them. As the values can be altered, I think the capacitors are also good?

Then, I found another switch (I think it's even a more expensive Allparts switch) in my parts bin, soldered it in, and exactly the same result. The neck pickup works in the left position, but not in the middle. The bridge doesn't work at all.

So I either have two new switches with the exact same error, or it's not that.

I also recut all the switch and pickup cables to make sure they are not feathered or touching. Also, the switch works fine in a mechanical view, it opens and closes in the right spot and there are no solder bridges.

I should also mention that I have a stereo jack and a killswitch in here. But from a logical point of view, they can't be the problem, because if the killswitch was wired wrong, I wouldn't get anything at all, it's independent from a single pickup. I wired the killswitch so that it grounds the signal when the switch is pressed. This works well.

Oh, I also bridged the skillswitch and soldered in a standard mono jack to the switch earlier. No joy.

Everything else is pretty standard.

I think I'll have a coffee break now =)

[Simon Barden]

Really strange. Without having the guitar in front of me, I can't think of what to suggest as it sounds like it should work.

[ThatCluelessGerman]

I could drop in some new pickups, just to test. But if this doesn't help, I'm really clueless.

[ThatCluelessGerman]

I got it!

I think the cable from the bridge pickup to the switch seemed to have a break in it. It looks fine from the outside though, no visible damage. I replaced the whole cable and it's now working as it should!

The weird thing is that I did get a multimeter reading from each lug of the switch.

I just found it as I was fiddling in the cavity with the headphones still on, and after folding the cable aside it started to crackle again. Yay.

Good thing about it is that I learnt how to use the multimeter with more confidence, pretty useful thing :-)

[Simon Barden]

They are indeed.