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Murphy - 1437 Update - Finale!

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bagman67 said:
I have no direct experience with the following, but I recall reading a tip somewhere about soldering to the back of pots:  If you scuff the surface of the pot slightly with a file, it helps form a better joint. Can anyone weigh in knowledgably about the accuracy of the foregoing?
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One of the secrets to a good solder joint is good mechanical joint, so an abraded surface will have a better grip. But, usually more to the point, it cleans the surface of any manufacturing oils or finishes that solder doesn't want to join with.

When you get right down to it, soldering to the pot's housing is an old practice born of laziness and the OEM's desire to save a penny. What really should be done is the addition of a grounding lug washer.

SPC-761-375-MT.jpg


That gives you a proper connection without ever needing to overheat the pot. You just install that on the pot's shaft as you mount the pot, then solder your grounds to that. It automatically grounds the pot's housing in the process. Tough to find the little rascals, though.
 
If you ground the sleeve terminal of the output jack, there is no need to ground the pots at all, as they will already be grounded through the shielding.
 
line6man said:
If you ground the sleeve terminal of the output jack, there is no need to ground the pots at all, as they will already be grounded through the shielding.
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That's assuming the shielding on the pickguard has been grounded, which it rarely is unless the pots have been grounded. The most convenient way to ground your pots and pickguard shielding is to use the method describe here (http://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=12054.0).
 
Gave up on the soldering and took it to the guitar shop down the street to be wired up.  :tard:  From the way the guy looked at it, some of the other things I did might have been questionable as well, so he's going to give it a once-over. He said he's not charging extra because I got him out of working on a banjo.
 
Cagey said:
line6man said:
If you ground the sleeve terminal of the output jack, there is no need to ground the pots at all, as they will already be grounded through the shielding.
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That's assuming the shielding on the pickguard has been grounded, which it rarely is unless the pots have been grounded. The most convenient way to ground your pots and pickguard shielding is to use the method describe here (http://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=12054.0).
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What the hell are you talking about?
If the output jack is grounded, that grounds the shielding on the pickguard.

The shielding on the pickguard should then come into contact with a piece of the shielding tape in the control cavity that extends up onto the top of the body, giving you a nice Faraday cage to enclose everything.
 
line6man said:
What the hell are you talking about?
If the output jack is grounded, that grounds the shielding on the pickguard.

The shielding on the pickguard should then come into contact with a piece of the shielding tape in the control cavity that extends up onto the top of the body, giving you a nice Faraday cage to enclose everything.
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Maybe we're talking about different guitars. I don't know why, but I assumed we were talking about Strats. In that case, the pickguard doesn't come into contact with the output jack.
 
Cagey said:
Patience is a part killer when soldering. You don't want the part to get hot, only the leads to it. In the case of pots, it's more difficult because it's not the solder sapping the heat, it's the pot's housing. It's thin metal with a large surface area, so it acts like a heat sink and cools both your soldering iron and the solder. That's what makes the stuff ball up and roll away instead of flowing. You don't need to add flux to the joint unless you're interested in a huge mess. There's very little solder sold that doesn't have a flux core. If you think you need more flux than that, it's because you've been on the joint for too long and you've burnt it off, and likely wrecked the part in the process.
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While there is some truth to this, the patience is to get the iron hot.  I use a 23W pointed tip soldering iron and it works fine.  The flux does burn off, that is the nature of the beast.  I said if the solder turns dull and makes sculptures you should add flux.  The 30-40 watt irons burn off the flux even quicker.  While you can wreck pots, you have to be quite persistent to do it with a soldering iron.  The metal does have to get hot, and so does the solder, for the surface alloy to be formed for a good joint, no way around it.  Certainly the pots housing will dissipate the heat and this leads to the wrecking of the pot, eventually.  But, a clean tinned tip on a 25 watt iron is more than enough to solder the joint and not toast the pot.  If this is something that is a problem, I am willing to bet that using the larger irons will result in toasting the pots just as easily.  Patience does not kill the parts, impatiences and brute force does.
Patrick

 
knucklehead G said:
Gave up on the soldering and took it to the guitar shop down the street to be wired up.  :tard:  From the way the guy looked at it, some of the other things I did might have been questionable as well, so he's going to give it a once-over. He said he's not charging extra because I got him out of working on a banjo.
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To expand on my previous line of reasoning a bit, this is a very good move if you are questioning what is going on.  Also, it saves a person from a banjo.
Patrick

 
If the solder turns dull and makes sculptures, you're overworking the joint and you've been on it far too long, most likely because you're iron isn't hot enough or the part itself is keeping things too cool by scavenging heat from the iron. That happens very easily with underpowered irons, pointy tips, and large parts. When it does happen, your best bet is to get out your solder sucker, clear the joint and start over. In 40 years of soldering, and I mean a lot of soldering, I've never bought or used any flux except when sweating copper water pipes. It just hasn't been necessary since about the '50s.

That's not to say it can't be done with a tool like you describe, because clearly it can. But, it's much more difficult and prone to failure. Since it's no fun in the first place, why do it twice?
 
Glad I took it to the shop, they did an awesome job and took pictures along the way as a bonus. Two guys at the shop offered to buy the neck off me right there for $500.. happily declined. Its mine.  :headbang:

Continued in P Bass forum!
http://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=12061.0
 
Looking good!

Cagey said:
That's a freakin' huge capacitor! What's up with that?
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That's probably a paper-in-oil capacitor from Angela Instruments.  They're supposed to be premium capacitors, better than even Sprague "orange drops".

I tried a few of 'em in my basses, and couldn't hear a difference.  But at least I have the satisfaction of paying more for the capacitor.  :)
 
I wonder who came up with the idea paper-in-oil caps were "premium" parts? I can believe they're expensive - it's an obsolete and costly manufacturing technique, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a lower quality part. That's what they used to use 100 years ago before they knew how make good caps. I just looked one of these up - a .022uf/630VDC part is $22!

They don't even make any claims about it (I'm sure they know better), they just use weasel words to coerce the incautious into thinking they're superior. "Could these be the best signal capacitors ever made? Many amp builders and guitar technicians all over the world think so."

This whole "tone" thing with capacitors in recent times is getting way out of hand. One of these days, I'm going to collect up a pile of capacitors of different construction styles from different manufacturers, all of the same purported value, and set up a bench test rig with instrumentation to do a review. There will be much gnashing of teeth and renting of garments when I'm through. Of course, everybody who's invested in the idea will call "shenanigans", but at least I'll finally have documented proof that everybody's getting ripped off.
 
Cagey said:
I wonder who came up with the idea paper-in-oil caps were "premium" parts? I can believe they're expensive - it's an obsolete and costly manufacturing technique, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a lower quality part. That's what they used to use 100 years ago before they knew how make good caps. I just looked one of these up - a .022uf/630VDC part is $22!

They don't even make any claims about it (I'm sure they know better), they just use weasel words to coerce the incautious into thinking they're superior. "Could these be the best signal capacitors ever made? Many amp builders and guitar technicians all over the world think so."

This whole "tone" thing with capacitors in recent times is getting way out of hand. One of these days, I'm going to collect up a pile of capacitors of different construction styles from different manufacturers, all of the same purported value, and set up a bench test rig with instrumentation to do a review. There will be much gnashing of teeth and renting of garments when I'm through. Of course, everybody who's invested in the idea will call "shenanigans", but at least I'll finally have documented proof that everybody's getting ripped off.
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I understand your viewpoint, Cagey. I'll be damned if I would be able to hear the difference between a Sprague 'Orange Drop', a Paper In  Oil one, or a  cheapy capacitor from the local electronics retailing shop like Tandy, but I'm equally damned sure I'd know about one that WASN'T working properly... :laughing7:

But it does seem to be the 'thing' that repairers do. I have a great sounding Esquire from Warmoth parts that needed a setup and took it along to a repairer. When I collected it, he said that he'd replaced the ceramic cheapies with better quality ones, but it sounded no better to my half deaf ears!

For me, the jury is still out on the exotic, hard-to-obtain-so-you-have-to-pay-premium-prices capacitors.
 
OzziePete said:
I understand your viewpoint, Cagey. I'll be damned if I would be able to hear the difference between a Sprague 'Orange Drop', a Paper In  Oil one, or a  cheapy capacitor from the local electronics retailing shop like Tandy, but I'm equally damned sure I'd know about one that WASN'T working properly... :laughing7:

But it does seem to be the 'thing' that repairers do. I have a great sounding Esquire from Warmoth parts that needed a setup and took it along to a repairer. When I collected it, he said that he'd replaced the ceramic cheapies with better quality ones, but it sounded no better to my half deaf ears!

For me, the jury is still out on the exotic, hard-to-obtain-so-you-have-to-pay-premium-prices capacitors.
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There actually is a difference between capacitors, but it's not from what people think. They're just notoriously sloppy parts. A tolerance range of 20% is not unusual. So, you may get a difference by replacing what's supposed to be a .022uf cap with a .022uf cap from another manufacturer or that has a different composition, when what you're actually doing is replacing a .018uf with a .024uf part because one was at the low end of the range and the other was at the high end for that size part. Of course they sound different. The frequency response of the circuit changed.

Somebody does a "cap job" on an amp, and maybe a dozen caps inadvertently change size. The amp sounds different now, but was it because the caps went from metalized Mylar to polyester film caps? No. It's because the tone control filters, cathode bias filters and coupling capacitors are all now a different value than they were before. I would be shocked and amazed if it sounded the same. But, people credit the capacitor's construction or the source of the parts for the difference, so now there's all this mythology out in the market. Naturally, the OEMs, aftermarket suppliers, and repair techs allow the myth to continue, because there's a lot of money in it for them. They can sell $.10 cent caps for $5 to $20 or more, or brag that their $350 amplifiers use superior parts and are worth $3,500.
 
tubby.twins said:
Looking good!

Cagey said:
That's a freakin' huge capacitor! What's up with that?
Click to expand...

That's probably a paper-in-oil capacitor from Angela Instruments.  They're supposed to be premium capacitors, better than even Sprague "orange drops".

I tried a few of 'em in my basses, and couldn't hear a difference.  But at least I have the satisfaction of paying more for the capacitor.  :)
Click to expand...

I've said this before, but what I did with the cap and pots (the cap was about $14 by the way, not one of those $40+ ones), is I found a P bass I loved the sound of and copied the wiring setup and just changed the pickups to better suit my needs. So no, I don't know why I have a $14 cap in there or if I could hear the difference from a $0.10 cap or a $100 one. But I do know that I am happy with the $14 one.
 
knucklehead G said:
I don't know why I have a $14 cap in there or if I could hear the difference from a $0.10 cap or a $100 one. But I do know that I am happy with the $14 one.
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That's all that matters.

I was just curious because it looked like an electrolytic, which are no good at all for that kind of application.
 
Cagey said:
knucklehead G said:
I don't know why I have a $14 cap in there or if I could hear the difference from a $0.10 cap or a $100 one. But I do know that I am happy with the $14 one.
Click to expand...

That's all that matters.

I was just curious because it looked like an electrolytic, which are no good at all for that kind of application.
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I got it from RS Guitarworks, and according to them it is paper in oil.
 
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