Weird volume control issue (already solved)

[Jumble Jumble]

I couldn't find this on Google, so I thought I'd write it up. Of course, it's very simple so when I opened the guitar it was plain to see.

I wired up a guitar that just had one volume control, nothing else. Everything worked fine, except the volume control. At 10, all fine. But rolling it off didn't really work. At zero, the guitar was definitely quieter, but not off, and there was a LOT less treble (not the normal amount you get from rolling off volume).

Long story short, the issue was that the terminal on the volume control that should be grounded, wasn't. The way I normally wire that terminal is to put the wire through the lug and then straight on to the back of the pot, then solder it in both places. This time I had soldered it to the back of the pot, but not to the lug, so there was just a very slight mechanical connection there, which obviously wasn't working. A quick solder job later and all was fine.

This was yet another "have a finally fried a pot?" moment in my life, in a long series. So far the answer has always been "no". I really can't imagine what you have to do to these things to kill them.

Hope this helps anyone googling the problem in the future!

 

[Cagey]

Somebody else here had that problem not too long ago. Don't remember the thread.

Essentially what's happening in that situation is you're just putting a variable resistor in series with the output, rather than creating a voltage divider the output taps off of. Turning the pot all the way down puts the most resistance in the path, and vice versa. But, you never get to ground, so you still end up with some output. When you're tapping the pot as a divider, then at one extreme your pickup is going straight out, at the other your out is grounded, with all points in between being variable.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Cool. I'd figured out that's what was happening but the diagram is a great addition to the thread for anyone searching it out.