can i do it myself?

[Philly Q]

Oh, and i asked him about the pickup covers, he popped them right off. Apparently they weren't soldered on.

Eek!  :o  I guess they weren't original! Which makes sense, the Faded Vs don't usually have covers.

[CJ]

Oh, and i asked him about the pickup covers, he popped them right off. Apparently they weren't soldered on.

Eek!  :o  I guess they weren't original! Which makes sense, the Faded Vs don't usually have covers.

i thought i said i put them on? What happend was i threw them on there, and then all of a sudden my guitar kept shocking me. So i took it into guitar center and they charged me like 70 bucks so i figured they put them on there right. I'm wondering if it was they who screwed up my wiring.

oh, this was all a while ago when i had no clue about anything.

[CJ]

eh... i think the guy put it in wrong. the poles that look like screws (not the flat ones) should be nearest the bridge right? cuz they're facing the middle of the guitar.

[Philly Q]

Well it's not wrong to have it the other way round, but conventionally the screw poles would be nearest the bridge.  It's a strange decision for him to make.

If the cable's long enough, you could just take the guitar apart again and turn the pickup round, without disconnecting it.  Wait until you need to change strings, I guess...

[CJ]

he never actually put the guitar together. i kept all the pickguard screws and everything so he wouldn't charge me extra. i just switched the pickup around, but there was so much wire that i had to shove some in the cavity with the pots. will it cause problems if that wire is touching the pots and/or other wires?

[Philly Q]

It doesn't matter if the braided cable touches ground points like the backs of pots, but you don't want it to contact the "hot" points where the pickup wires are connected to the tags on the pots and/or switch.

See if you can loop the cable so the excess length is sitting in the cavity under the pickup, away from the controls.  And it wouldn't do any harm to tape it in place.

[CJ]

ok, its fine if its touching the bottom of the pickup right?

[Philly Q]

Yep, no problem if it touches the pickup baseplate - in fact that's where the pickup end of the braid is soldered to.

[CJ]

oh yeah, and i got some strange buzzing on the bridge on the high e now. any ideas? the string is rattling between the bridge and the tailpiece. it looks like the string is touching the bridge, but i don't see how it couldn't. nothings different then it was before

[Philly Q]

Only on the high E?  And is it there when the guitar's unplugged, or is it an electrical buzzing?

[CJ]

Only on the high E?  And is it there when the guitar's unplugged, or is it an electrical buzzing?

unplugged, check my edited post. i've only put the high e and the low e strings on right now because i'm trying to figure out why its buzzing. it looks like it could be fixed if i moved that little thing on the bridge back (that adjusts the intonation), but, it would do exactly that, and mess up my intonation.

[Philly Q]

The two E strings often touch the back of the bridge because those two saddles are lower to accommodate the fretboard radius, but I've never seen it cause a rattle.  Maybe the tailpiece is a little too high (or low), so the high E is only just touching?
I wouldn't move the saddle (assuming the intonation is OK).  You could try the Zakk Wylde approach of loading the strings from the front of the tailpiece then wrapping them over the top.  That way the E strings won't touch the back of the bridge and (apparently) string bending is a little easier.  It'll scratch up the tailpiece though.

[CJ]

i think it did get a little high and was maybe just barely touching. i fooled around with it a bit, not sure what i did, but its fine now.