I've been playing guitar on and off for 25 years. For the past few years I've just played an old classical guitar but I decided to get back into the electric and actually learn a few songs. I had an old 70s/80s Japanese Strat copy in the loft... completely uncared for and in a right state. I've never done any guitar work whatsoever but decided I'd like to replace everything on it for a bit of fun, and to learn about how it works and so on. Everything on it was working perfectly fine but the hardware was rusty and even the pickups were rusty.
So - I've gutted the whole thing, replaced the bridge, tuners, nut, output jack, pick guard, pots and pickups.
Once I'd completed the soldering I plugged in and tested the pickups and switch. To my absolute sheer amazement the neck pickup worked fine! And the middle pickup too! Fantastic - my heart soared. I flipped to the bridge pickup expecting it to be a formality and.... nothing... sigh... I knew it was too good to be true. There's a faint hum which increases in volume as I turn the volume pot up but that's all.
I should mention I haven't strung the guitar yet - I was just testing by tapping a screwdriver on the pickups.
Here's the wiring plan I followed:
Sorry for the dogs dinner of the new wiring setup.
Also the new plan looks different to the original?
Well any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. I've read about wiring the pickup straight to the output jack to test whether its working - good idea? The guy I purchased the pickups from said it's like one of the pots?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Comments
I'm going to get hold of a multimeter to do some testing. The old rusty pickups were working, but in any case I've replaced them with brand new pickups - and it's the brand new bridge pickup which isn't working.
It could well be the switch - that type are cheap and unreliable. The simplest way to test this is swap the bridge and one of the other pickup connections on the switch and see which position now doesn't work - if the bridge end position is still dead it's the switch. If the fault moves with the pickup it's the pickup.
Once you've identified and hopefully fixed the problem, it's well worth undoing the pickup wiring again, shortening the wires to the correct length and neatly twisting the pairs - it's not only tidy, it drastically reduces noise.
It's not just you, the Fender Custom Shop can't get this right! I fixed this one... before and after:
Just doing that reduced the noise by more than half.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Great tip on the wiring and twisting the pairs - I'll do that and trim it all down. thanks for the pics - very useful. Seems I'm in good company (or bad?) with Fender!
Check it's the switch first though, not a great deal of point in replacing it if it's actually working.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
You should always wire any spare poles of a switch to parallel the switching - it increases reliability for no penalty other than a little time. (And can reduce switching noise sometimes.)
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Ian
Lowering my expectations has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.
Ian
Lowering my expectations has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.