Telecaster - much lower in volume after 4-way modding

[Notyethendrix]

Hey guys, how's going?

Well, I purchased a 4-way toggle switch on ebay, plus a GFS pickup(neck) and modded my tele, so now it has one extra position which turns on both pickups in series. It sounds great and very very versatile.

But I noticed the volume drops dramatically(all 4 positions) when I had my full band jam last week, I have to turn my 50watts amp to max. in order to cut thru, this is not normal.

But the wiring is right, everything works great, sounds great too, so what's the problem? Did I damage the volume pot with the solder-iron?

Thanks for reading this, cheers.

[Gris]

Dunno, all i can say is my 4-way Tele is the loudest SC guitar I've ever played (in the SC positions).

[chuckocaster]

you might have melted the pot.

i had this same problem and it was a cold solder joint on the output tab of the vol pot. i haven't had a cold solder joint in a long time. so i reflowed the joint and viola!

i suggest you open the guitar up and reflow all the connections, all of them that you touched. sometimes you'll get a cold joint that will look alright.

[orrong65]

Yeah, definitely something wrong.

If youve used a standard wiring diagram like the Seymour Duncan 4-way, there should be no change to the volume and tone from the three previous settings - neck, neck+bridge (parallel), bridge.

The new neck+bridge series setting should be noticeably louder (and slightly thicker), as you have doubled the effective pickup impedance to 12-14 k ohms in this position.

As one suggestion, un-solder the tone circuit connection from the volume pot to see if that makes any difference, and if it doesnt, the problem is in the pickup wiring and volume pot.

A second suggestion is to check to make sure you disconnected the earth from the neck pickup black wire, and ran a separte new wire back to the pot common earth.

Finally, cold solder joints are a real possibility.

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Its all about the tone!