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Wiring help, please...

exalted

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Okay, so I wired up my Jazzmaster, but it's not quite right. I can't find switches that actually fit in the upper horn - everything locally is too short, so currently the switches are only screwed into one hole. I'm thinking about installing two push-pull pots and having those act as pickup switches.

As for the wiring itself, there are two big and two little issues that I'm worried about (for now):

1) The tone control doesn't work - it just acts like another volume.

2) When I turn both pickups on, only the neck pup comes on.

3) There seems to be a slight grounding problem (minor humming)

4) When I turn both pickups off, the guitar still makes some (but not much) noise - shouldn't it be totally dead?




 
The MS paint image above is the best representation I can give of what I've got going on in here. The actual colors of the wires doesn't mean anything (except black=ground)...I just color coded them to make them easier to follow.

Also, if it matters, the bridge pup is wired in parallel, and the neck pup is wired in series.


And just for the record, I have no intention of ever trying to solder for a living.  :icon_jokercolor:
 
Ok bro I can help you with this but it's almot 2 am here in Penna and I'm having a hard time focusing on your drawing.  I'll gladly figure this out for you in the morning..... 

BTW I am really digging that sparkly metal flake fiinish.  I saw a Harley the other day painted just like that and it popped!!!!  Best looking bike in the showroom, it looks like a different color at every angle. 

I'll let you know what I come up with.  This is one of those situations thought that might benefit from actual human to human communication without a computer.  What I mean is I might have to speak with you on the phone to explain this all to you, we'll see what I come up with and how well you understand what I am saying......  I'll do my best to get you squared away, but I gotta go to bed.........
 
Cool, no worries! If I had the correct switches, I would just pay the local luthier to wire it up, but I don't want to spend 60 bucks for him to wire up something I'll eventually replace.

In the interim, it plays, and that's what matters.

And I'm digging the finish more and more every day, too. It's flashy but simple.
 
Ok bro lets see if I saved you $60 or not.
l_440f55ccc1dd488ca5bbf1342da03fc6.jpg


Here is how I would wire this puppy up:  Some of it is a little redundant, but I know it will work.  You see I drew the hot leads off of the PU's to the switches, then I sent the hot leads from both switches to the volume control individually and connected them there.  I'd rather use a little more wire and have the circuit work.

I drew a .002 micro farand treble bleed onto the volume pot, I think they are almost a necessity.  Also being a lefty, unless you are using reverse taper pots (made specifically for lefty guitars) you have to ground the pot with the left most lug when looking at the pot from the bottom with the lugs facing up or they won't work well.  Use whatever floats your boat as far as a tone capacitor.

Ok on the grounding what I do is put a screw into the side of control cavity and run my string ground to it, then I attach a piece of 14 guage solid copper wire to the screw and run the 14 guage wire around the edge of the control cavity.  I end it with another screw and I have a nice neat place to solder all of my grounds to.  I actually don't solder all the grounds to one common point on the wire either.... I solder them all seprately that way if I need to pull something out to change it, I can de-solder it without having 10 other wires getting de-soldered. That way you can put a ground lead onto your pots outside of the guitar and run those wires to your piece of solid copper wire.  I get the copper wire out of Romex which is the stuff electricians use to wire houses.  I just cut a piece of it off the roll, there are three wires in it, and I pull the uninsulated center grounding wire out of the jacket and use that.  I find it way easier to solder the grounds to the copper rather than trying to get it to stick to the back of a pot.  Also you don't run as much of a risk of frying the pot that way.  You have shielding in that guitar, you can actually use that for your common ground point too and forget about the grounds on the pots as long as the shielding is properly connected to your string ground.  Personally I think shielding is a waste of money, I don't really think it helps especially if you have properly grounded everything.  But leave it there don't pull it out it's expensive, it won't hurt anything in there.

Ok here would be my plan of attack on this.  First pull out everything you did and start over.  Start with your grounds.  Do all the grounding before you touch a hot lead.  You need to think of the signal path as a race track or something like that, a loop with no beginning and no end.  If the signal is travelling out of the positive side of the circuit, you need to imagine the 'signal' as a runner on the track.  He has to start at the pickup and travel down the path you made for him through the switches, through the volume pot, he can detour to the tone (the tone is kind of an off ramp on the highway) and off to the tip of the jack.  Then he travels through the cord, through your effects, to your amp to the speaker in your amp, then he has to turn around at the speaker and take the road home called Negative.  All he has to do is get back to ground, he doesn't need to go all the way back to the pickup, the finish line is at the string ground.  I use this visualization in my mind every time I wire anything on a DC circuit.  Two pickups are two different racers although they are on the same team there is no winner or loser in this situation, everybody gets a trophy.

Everything I know about guitar wiring I learned from the book "Guitar Electronics for Musicians" by Donald Brosnac.  It was written in the early '80's but not much has really changed since then in terms of guitar wiring.  My copy is about 17 years old and it is falling apart.  There is solder stuck to a bunch of pages and little pieces of wire insulation all through it.  I will find a schematic in it that is close to what I am working on and put it on the bench right beside the guitar.  I didn't look up a Jazzmaster to draw you this schematic, I just used my little racer trick in my mind and drew it up for you.  The way I drew that for you should get you what you are looking for.  Also if you are using a little pencil soldering iron it takes a long time to put the required heat into a pot case to get a good joint... I use my big old Weller dual temp gun for those tasks.  Lately I have been using the big boy for all my wiring tasks, it is way faster than a little iron, but it takes a little finesse cause you can fry stuff really fast with that amount of heat.

If you can't see the drawing very well on the forum here, PM me your email address and I'll send you a bigger picture that you can actually read.  Good luck buddy.  It's really not that hard once you get in the right mindset about how it all works......  I think you'll get it.
 
Okay, this looks great! I'll have to wait 'til tomorrow to try it out, though...wife will be at work, and I'll be off for the holiday.

I'll report back sometime tomorrow on this.

Thank you so much!!  :headbang:
 
If you wired it like that diagram, the fix is simple,

You have both sides if the cap grounded, clip that short grey wire. That pot is currently a volume
 
Alfang said:
If you wired it like that diagram, the fix is simple,

You have both sides if the cap grounded, clip that short grey wire. That pot is currently a volume

Hey, that did work! Much happier with the Super Distortion in the bridge now. Still some other problems, so I'll probably end up rewiring it tomorrow, since I don't have anything else to do.
 
exalted said:
Okay, this looks great! I'll have to wait 'til tomorrow to try it out, though...wife will be at work, and I'll be off for the holiday.

I'll report back sometime tomorrow on this.

Thank you so much!!  :headbang:

Hope it works for you bro.  If you need me to I will still send you my schematic via email where you can open it in paint and make it nice and big if necessary.  Electrically I think my drawing and yours are pretty much the same, I wire all my volume controls J bass style so they are independent of each other.  J bass style sends the signal from the pickup to ground, not the whole signal, so another pickup won't be affected.  Not totally necessary in your setup, I just do them that way for consistency in my builds and repairs (unless is it some vintage Fender or something along those lines, then I try to wire them the way the factory did)

Oh well I told you that you'd find your answers here............. Let us know how it turns out.  I'll be home here later this afternoon if you need some help......
 
Whew! Took my damn near all day, but I'm done.

I mostly followed your schematic, and it worked out great...still not grounded quite correctly, but it's not TOO bad.

Thank you so much!!!
 
Dude, you mostly followed schematic?  you either follow it or not, electronics is an exact science, you either do it right or you screw it up, good luck peace out
 
Well, the switches were backwards in the diagram, and due to the funky control cavities, I had to wire a workaround.
 
One thing I noticed that's kind of strange....when I turn the guitar's volume down, I get a bunch of grounding noise, but otherwise it's pretty quiet...

Any ideas?
 
Blue313 said:
Double check your grounds. It sounds like one of them may be a cold joint.

That would be my sight unseen diagnosis also, or possibly a string ground problem....

Tell us this, when the guitar is turned up plugged in, when you touch the strings, does the noise change?
(louder, quieter, no hum while touching or the other way around)  What about when the volume is turned down?  Does the hum quit when you touch the strings, or the bridge or a metal knob or pot shaft?
let me know the answer to these questions and we'll go from there.......


 
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