Tone Troubles

[TheArchitect]

I have a particular solid body electric that just sounds way out of whack compared to my other similar makes and models of electrics. I have tried a few sets of pickups in it and the result is still a very thin, boxy sound. Acoustically its not bad at all. Its not a phase issue. At least not from the pickup wiring. I get this effect even with a single pickup. I put the meter on the vol pot and its within 10% of spec. I tried adding a resistor across the lugs to bring the vol put down to 250k which worked as expected in removing a little high end but the bass was still non existent.

I have never come across a pot or other component so far out of spec to cause this type of issue. I guess it could still be based in the acoustics of the guitar but I am not hearing that acoustically.

I have no problem gutting the electronics and rewiring from scratch but I also don't want to waste my time either. So the question is this. Can a bad/out of spec pot/cap/resistor or combo there of really screw up the tone like that? I have never experienced that in 25 years of playing but I don't rotate through new instruments much.

[Gold Strat]

I am not an expert, I had issues with a bad input that I replaced and solved the problem. Make sure it is wired properly!

[chuckocaster]

maybe you burned up the vol pot? i'd personally go through and retouch all the solder joints, every single one of them. i had a strat that i built that developed this problem, it was a cold joint on the vol pot. it was intermittent and hard to track down. 9 times out of ten i've found that wiring problems are usually a cold joint somewhere. solder suck the old solder off and reflow with good solder. if that doesn't help it, try hooking each pup separately to the output jack directly. if that cures the problem then i'd just gut and rebuild.

since this has always been a problem, i'd suspect that the wiring of the vol and tone pots to be suspect.

[cdw2000]

The only thing I can think of is that the tone/volume circuit is somehow mis-wired.

In most guitars the capacitor and tone pot are wired across the pickup(s) so that they tend to load down the pickups' output more at the higher frequencies. But if the capacitor and tone control were somehow wired in series with the pickup, it could seriously attenuate the bass.

If you have a reference wiring diagram, you check the circuit point-by-point against that.

[curtisstetka]

I would wire one pickup directly to the jack, bypassing everything else, and see what that sounds like. That will help you narrow down where the problem lies.

You say you've tried multiple pickups in the guitar and they all have the same trouble. So that would seem that the problem is not a particular set of pickups.

Now you need to determine if the guitar itself just has chronic issues when amplified. Pickup direct to jack will tell you that.

Once you've got that figured out, you'll know how to proceed. Personally, I'd just toss the pots and start fresh. Pots are not that expensive. Why spend time futzing around with them?

[TheArchitect]

I finally have all of the amps cleaned up and drywall dust removed. I can start looking into this again.

[Don]

I would wire one pickup directly to the jack, bypassing everything else, and see what that sounds like. That will help you narrow down where the problem lies.

You say you've tried multiple pickups in the guitar and they all have the same trouble. So that would seem that the problem is not a particular set of pickups.

Now you need to determine if the guitar itself just has chronic issues when amplified. Pickup direct to jack will tell you that.

Once you've got that figured out, you'll know how to proceed. Personally, I'd just toss the pots and start fresh. Pots are not that expensive. Why spend time futzing around with them?

I'd try this. Just remember that the jack might be bad so try a different jack.