No tone control

Ben

Firstly, I would like to say that I am a novice at guitar mods.

Since replacing the pickguard on my Eastwood Hi Flyer, I am unable to get any treble when rolling the tone knob on and off.

I though it may have something to do with the foil shield on the back of the pickguard ( I used tin foil on the new pickguard ) So I fitted back on original pickguard but still no tone control.

I decided to buy a solder iron and 0.33 Orange Cap. I touched up some of the joints and attached the new capacitor, thinking maybe one of the solder joint came apart during the pickguard change.... But still no tone control.

The volume works fine as does the pickup selector switch.

Any ideas?

robertoriginal

your joints are REALLY dirty and sloppy. take all the wires off, clean the pot, take some high grit paper, like 1000 or something close, and clean off the back of the pot.

what diagram are you using? your ground lug also looks like it isn't attached to the back of the pot like it should be, think of it like this.

your middle lug is always the variable lug, the outside lugs are you positive and negative(depending on if its a righty or lefty guitar)

Ben

It's a brand new guitar and all wiring was untouched by me and still no tone control.

I took a picture of the wiring before I attacked the pots with a solder iron 😀 and referred to the picture when soldering the joints.

Thanks for the advise. I will have a go at cleaning up the pots.

The pictures make the pots black and perhaps dirtier than they actually appear.

Like I said it's all brand new. The loss of tone control happened before any soldering took place.

Pots and wire are cheap so think I may start again with new electrics, if cleaning up the current pots doesn't work.

Do 500k pots work well with P90's?

robertoriginal

WOW~! those joints are really bad, i can see in the second pic where the iron touched the white wire and half melted thru, that is really bad. 500 for p-90s? yea, i think all gibsons use 500's for the p-90. i want to say i have 500, and 250 on my p-90 guitars, but im not 100 percent on that.

Ben

I will buy some wire and have a go at tidying the electrics up.

Do you recommend exposing a little more wire to the solder joint to avoid the wire being melted?

Overall I need to practice my soldering and this is a good opportunity for me to improve.

robertoriginal

ypu shouldn't have to exposed any wire really, what i was talking about was in the second pic some of the wire near the vol. pot is depressed and slightly flattened.

Ben

What do you mean by 'pot is depressed and slightly flattened'? Sounds like how I feel sometimes 😀

Will too much heat damage a pot?

Sorry for all the questions.

LumpyWaters

It might seem counterintuitive, but a soldering iron that isnt hot enough is more likely to do some damage because you keep it in contact with the parts for a longer time struggling to the get the solder to melt. The soldering in the pictures was obviously done with a soldering iron that was not hot enough for the task. You can tell becuase of the charring, which is probably solder flux but could also be wire insulation or maybe even the plastic part of the pot and also becuase of the lumpy, grainy solder blobs. Most common electronics solder has rosin flux in it, and its not a bad idea to have some additional liquid or paste flux that you can dab on the surfaces to be soldered. Flux melts at a little bit lower temperature than solder and helps clean the surfaces and also helps the solder to flow nicely as the rosin melts and boils away. You should have nice smooth solder joints. Clean surfaces, a little flux and proper soldering iron temperature all work together to achieve that. A good, properly done solder joint with a soldering iron at the right temperature can be done quickly and smoothly without anything getting too hot.

robertoriginal

not the pot, the wire for the pot. the white wire for the vol pot has been melted.