Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Tech => Topic started by: one on December 27, 2016, 10:53:47 AM
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Hi mates.
I just found out my main guitar makes a terrible scratching sound like of crumbling paper every time I turn the volume pot. Can I easily solve that without going a tech? I'm terribly talented and scared of messing up with electronics.
By the way, might it be affecting the tone in my pickup? I don't love the one installed, a C-bomb and I was wondering if that would have something to do.
Cheers!
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Sounds like someone cooked the pot. Did you install it yourself? You can't hold a hot soldering iron on a pot for too long. If the heat transfers up the shaft you can cook the pot
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No, the guitar came that way. You scared the hell out of me, can I fix that? might it have to do with me not liking the Cbomb too much?
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Pots aren't very expensive. Use 60/40 solder (if it is available where you are, otherwise whatever has the lowest melting point) and a 40W iron. Wait until the iron gets very hot, so that it liquefies quicker once you apply the iron. What you don't want to be doing is holding the hot iron against the pot long enough for the shaft of the pot to get hot. It should just be the back of the pot (where you are working) that gets hot. I would say that most cooked pots result from springy bridge ground wires that don't want to sit against the back of the pot when you are soldering, so try to ensure that the wire is placing some pressure down on the back of the pot rather than away from it before you start trying to solder that back on.
With that said I have to go out and repair the harness in my SG now. Both selector switch connections are broken
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Damn! this again! I didn't change my pups because of lack of soldering skill and problems keep coming at that. Thanks, AO, but I won't do that on my own and there's not a trustworthy tech around, maybe one 80km away :( Do you think it will improve the tone of my pickups or just eliminate the scratchy sound of the pot when volume up and down?
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Unless the value of the pot is different then the only real change from installing a new pot will be removing the scratchy sound
You could try changing capacitors (although this mainly affects the tone when your roll the tone off a bit) or changing the wiring layout, e.g., to '50s style
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Thanks AO :undecided: