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Desperate for help with wiring

Dawood

New member
Joined
May 8, 2019
Messages
5
Hey all,

So I finally finished building and spraying my very first les paul. Took me a solid 6 months. Now it's time to wire it up and give it a go!?! Nope....

I bought brand new CTS pots, switchcraft toggle switch and jack, The pups are bare knuckle pg blues. So I wired everything up. plugged it in.. And it sounds off.. Of course I was extremely disappointed and stressed because this was supposed to be my moment! It was finally finished!
Other than sounding off, the 2 main problems are: both tone pots just straight up don't work (not even scratching or slightly changing the sound), and Both volume pots only work on the first 10% (I'm using lin for volume and log for tone)

And here's the weird thing. I thought maybe the pots are faulty or I burned them with exces heat.. So I took the harness out of my epi les paul (That I completely re-wired myself a year ago, and everything works perfectly in it) I put it in the new les paul. And exact same problems...
So then I thought maybe it's the pickups.. I took the bridge pickup from my epi and installed it in the new one.. nothing changed..

I'm really lost right now.. All the solder connections look good to me. I've been trying to fix this for 3 days now... please help!
 

PaulD

Active member
Joined
Jun 25, 2007
Messages
673
Can you post a good clear picture of your control cavity showing the wiring?
 

PaulD

Active member
Joined
Jun 25, 2007
Messages
673
I can't see anything glaringly obvious from the photos. Is the braided outer shield of the wires going to the switch soldered to the back of the pots? (I can't quite tell from the photos but if it's not it should be). Also make sure the cap wires and the metal bodies of the caps are not touching any ground wires or the backs of the pots, some metal bodied caps have the casing connected to one of the terminals so the metal body could short it to ground which would prevent the tone controls working.
 

Dawood

New member
Joined
May 8, 2019
Messages
5
Yep the braided outer shield from the switch is connected to both volume pots. And i'm 100% sure the caps are not touching anything that's grounded.
 

PaulD

Active member
Joined
Jun 25, 2007
Messages
673
Strange.... My gut feeling from the symptoms you describe would be that something is not grounded properly. Perhaps have a good look at all your ground connections (jack socket, back of pots, ground terminal at switch etc) and re-flow any solder joints that look dodgy. If you have a multimeter check the continuity from the jack sleeve to all the pot casings, braided shields and the ground terminal on the switch, they should all show good continuity (less than 1 ohm).
 

Dawood

New member
Joined
May 8, 2019
Messages
5
Ok I finally found the culprit. It was the switch and/or the braided wire from the switch. I used the switch and wires from my epi and it worked :D
Maybe some tin leaked trough the cloth and caused a short? The outer braid on the wire I use now is pretty loose and big compared to the wire in my epi. Which has tighter braiding.

Anyway, thank you very much for trying to help me Paul!
 

PaulD

Active member
Joined
Jun 25, 2007
Messages
673
You're welcome, glad it is sorted. :)

The outer braid can sometimes melt the insulation on the inner conductor when soldering it and cause shorts. Done it myself a few times and it can be almost impossible to see if it has happened.
 

GeraintGuitar

Member
Joined
Aug 28, 2017
Messages
115
I love reading threads that have a begining ( problem) and end ( problem resolved )
Well done boys! , on the thread and sorting the problem. :)
 
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