Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Tech => Topic started by: Lazy_McDoesnothing on May 23, 2008, 06:04:26 PM
-
I got a set of Nailbombs from ebay and wired them up last night. The neck sounds great but the bridge sounds out of phase and thin. Could this happen if the volume pot got too hot while soldering? Or is there something wrong internally with the pickup. Could I wire up the pickup directly to the switch or to the jack to find out and if so which wires go where?
The white and green wires are still together, black and bare are soldered to the back of the volume pot, and red is on the left lug. I know that's all right since it was just the 2 connections I had to solder for the swap.
-
I think you're right on the money, mate.
First up, I'd look at the most simple things: look for stray bits of wire or solder that might be causing part of your input signal from that pickup to short to earth. Look for dry or messy solder joints in that signal path that might be causing voltage drops.
After checking all your connections, try soldering the suspect pickup straight to the output jack. If it works, then you can rule it out as the problem.
If you have a multimeter, then it's really easy to check that your switches and pots are working properly by checking their resistance and continuity as you flick the switch or turn the knob. (You'll probably have to take them out of circuit to do this, though).
So basically, I'd check the simple things, then try to eliminate the pickup itself as faulty, then rewire it in and redo all the connections, checking each component with a multimeter as you go. You might find that simply redoing solder joints will fix your problem.
Good luck!
-
Sorry, I missed the other part of your question. To wire a pickup directly to output, just connect the black and bare to the sleeve of the output jack (you should have a wire from the sleeve to the body of the volume pot); and the red to the tip of the output jack.
Don't forget to attach the ground wire from the bridge or trem (which should be going to your volume pot too) to the output sleeve either!
-
Huge thanks! I wired up the bridge pickup to a separate output jack I had lying around with red to tip, black/bare and ground to sleeve. The sound is still thin, exactly as it was before. It seems something's wrong internally with the 'bucker.
Some of the tape that goes around the humbucker is peeled away and I can see a bit of wire. It seems somebody tried to have a look inside or it got damaged another way. Here's a pic of what I'm describing:
(http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/813/0c513zh7.jpg)
Looks like I need to have a talk with the seller... :roll: