Help! New pickup wiring

Gwatkins15

I've just changed my neck pickup in my Tele, just desoldered the wires and soldered in the new ones in the same place. The old pickup was a BKP Piledriver (same as the bridge), new is an Oil City Californian. The bridge pickup sounds the same, the new neck pickup has hardly any volume at all. I expect some difference as the Piledriver is very punchy. Can someone look at the wiring and see if I've missed something silly? 

Funkfingers

It would help to have a photograph from slightly further away from the controls. 

As things stand, I see two black insulated conductors soldered to the chassis of the volume pot where I would expect to see three. One ground per pickup plus a third one to the output jack socket.

In my opinion, the existing solder on the two black conductors does not look especially convincing. It might be worth doing the four joints for the pickup conductors again using fresh solder to ensure good contact.



If the guitar were my own, I would examine the undersides of both pickups to check the condition of the connections on their fibreboard bobbins. NEVER assume that brand new stuff will work straight out of the box.

Gwatkins15

Thanks for you help but I've been an idiot and I'm thoroughly pissed off. 

I accidentally broke the thin copper wire from the coil to the hot lead of the pickup. I've redone the solder joints though, so when I get a new one (again!) all should be good. 

Funkfingers

All is not lost.

If the break is between the coil and the soldering eyelet for the white ("hot") output conductor, a skilled hand can unwind one turn of the copper wire then, tie and reconnect the working end.

That skilled hand is Ash at Oil City Pickups. You need to contact @TheGuitarWeasel directly. I can not speak for the likely charge for the repair work plus two-way shipping. It should still be less than the price of another pickup.

ICBM

You can also solder a strand of wire from the broken bit to the eyelet, if the break isn't right against the coil - you need to scrape off the coating on the top of the coil wire, which needs great care to avoid cutting through it and making the problem worse - then take one strand of wire from a bit of old pickup cable, solder it to the top of the broken piece and connect it to the eyelet. I like to melt a little wax over the top of the repair to protect it.

(A soldering iron with a fine pointed tip helps.)

Gwatkins15

Thank you both for your advice, done and coated with wax which is a good tip. Bare knuckle cover theirs which make sense, I might do that too now in future.