Neck pickup unusable after 50s mod

[CannonsAhoy]

Tonight I tried to do a 50s wiring with independent volume controls on my new Hagström Super Swede (a good LP copy). It seems I was successful but somehow the neck pup got shorted out in the process. Meaning, bridge pup works wonders, but there is no volume from the neck pup and middle position is essentially same as bridge pup.

I noticed that if I turn the amp volume ridiculously up then the pickup starts to be audible but that is somewhere around vol5-6 on my amp and normally even vol1 would more than enough volume for playing. Besides if I had to switch for the bridge I'd have to back the amp volume again to 1 and of course that isn't what I want.

I observed the circuit and it seems everything is wired accordingly. The jack is ok and the selector seems to be ok. There seems to be no difference between the bridge and neck side of the circuit. Yet still bridge pu works and neck doesn't. Both pickups worked fine before the mod and the guitar is brand new. Where is the problem? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

PS. How good does the soldering work need to be? I'm quite an amateur but I think I did pretty well. I re-soldered some connections to make sure they weren't faulty.

 

[River]

Is your wire open/braided ground? When that happens to me, the ground is touching a hot-side connection.

 

[jonesy]

If you could post some pics of your wiring that would be helpful, otherwise it's kind of tough to trouble shoot wiring problems over the internet with no pics and limited info.

If I had to guess I would say you melted the ground to hot on the neck pu lead and it is shorting out. Check it out and see if that is the case. If so cut an inch or so off of the pickup lead and re-solder it.

If you have a multimeter set it on the 10-20K Ohm range and see if you get a normal reading on your neck pickup (7-10K ohms) if so then move on from there and try and track down the short.

You may have a problem with the switch leads or possibly even the switch itself, not sure what all you changed when you did this wiring mod.

Like River mentioned be sure that nothing is touching inside the control or switch cavity that shouldn't be and causing a short.

 

[CannonsAhoy]

Thanks for the replies, I'll try to get some pics posted

 

[Jaaniic]

I once had the same thing. There was a small ground wire as wide as a hair that I had soldered to the hot and hadn't noticed. Took some close inspection of the soldering places to find it.

 

[b-squared]

Odds are its a cold solder or you have a couple of wires touching that shouldn't.

I had a similar problem on my R7 (bridge volume not working properly) and I found a single strand of stray wire crossing the terminals on the volume pot. Cleaned it up, and now it's fine.

BB

 

[tazzboy]

That's what I am thinking to BB but without pictures it's crap shoot.

 

[LawDaddy]

Odds are its a cold solder or you have a couple of wires touching that shouldn't.

I had a similar problem on my R7 (bridge volume not working properly) and I found a single strand of stray wire crossing the terminals on the volume pot. Cleaned it up, and now it's fine.

BB

This is almost always the cause of problems for me. I've learned to take the guitar out into bright sunlight to look for those little gremlins.