Noise/output problems with volume pot

Simon_M

My guitar started making horrendous noise and very low output so I took it apart to fix it. I replaced the switch, the output jack and both pots and have rewired it. I'm an electrician so I'm pretty confident with this kind of thing.

After rewiring I have the same problem. If I remove the pots from the circuit and just wire the output of the toggle to the jack I get the way it used to sound with the volume and tone pots both on full but with the volume pot back in the circuit it doesn't matter where the pot is I just get very low output and lots of noise. Any ideas what I may have done wrong?

This is how I wired it:

http://www.irongear.co.uk/2_x_humbuckers_4-wire___1_vol__1_tone__3-way_toggle__no_coil_switching_v03_igwm.gif

ICBM

If you've wired it like that with no mistakes you've either got a faulty pot, or if it's *exactly* like that, the bare leg of the tone cap may be touching the pot casing... that's not a good way to draw it!

The only other thing I can think of is that you've got a DC voltage leak from whatever you're plugging into - amp or pedal - which will make a volume pot very noisy, but it shouldn't give low output I don't think.

Simon_M

Thanks @ICBM ! Yep, my wiring was okay. I got the pot on my multimeter and it didn't seem right so I swapped the pot out for a new one and it works fine now. Strange that I ended up with two dodgy pots (unless the first fault was something else) but I'm pleased it's all sorted now. Thanks again.

Funkfingers

Dare we ask the brand of the offending pot(s)? 

Simon_M

Funkfingers said:

Dare we ask the brand of the offending pot(s)? 

Both faulty pots were Alpha brand.