Pickup problem???

William

Today I became the proud new owner of a 1995 JS. I bought it from someone in the US and had to import it to The Netherlands, Europe. (The're not much JS over here ☹ )

When I switch the neck pickup off, and the bridge one on there is no sound at all. If I then turn the Tone knob at it's highest position then I can hear some sound from my amp, but not much. It's like playing unamplified. ( I have to turn my 100 watts amp full open to even hear a little.)

Is there a problem somewhere in the tone knob or humbucker, or is this normal??

Please someone help me out before I open it up.

Malik

There's no harm in opening it up, I suggest you go for it. Check for any obvious wires not connected up. My Jag-Stang is wired up wrong I believe, when I turn my tone down my volume goes down too, and I need to get that fixed. I can certainly tell you that's not meant to happen, so there's something wrong under the pickguard.

William

I've opened it up and found nothing obvious. Everything is wired as in the diagram.

The humbucker has no output with the tone pot "closed", when you turn it open it has a little output.

Is the humbucker broken?

Malik

May well be. Like I said, with my Jag-Stang if I close the tone pot then I get no sound out on either pickup. When it's up full it all works fine. My humbucker is pretty weak, but it definitely works when the tone's up. I'm not sure what the problem is if it's all wired up correctly...

Rick

well if it's wired exactly as the diagram, logic leaves us with the conclusion that it's either the humbucker, pot or one of the swtiches that's the problem...

jagstangowner

send it back and demand a refund

Aug

I'm going to laugh hysterically if his bridge switch is in the "off" position...

Rick

i thought he could have been doing that at first. but he seems to know how to switch the other pup on, so i don't think it'll be the case

William

Augustus_McCrae said: I'm going to laugh hysterically if his bridge switch is in the "off" position...

Lol, me too. But unfortunatly I am sure that's on the ON position. Is there a way to test the components?

Sending it back is not really an option. It'll cost a lot to send it back to the other side of the world. I've mailed the seller first , and if we can't talk about it i can use the buyersprotection from paypal and/or my creditcard.

Aug

the next recourse is:

1. take it to a professional guitar tech

2. post a few closeup pics of the switches, pots, input jack and pups, and we'll try to sort things out.

My gut feeling is a bad switch.

William

I've cleaned all the pots and switches with some alcohol and it seems to be better now. Still the tone knob is arranging the volume of the humbucker.

I don't have a camera at this moment so I can't place some pictures, but every thing looks normal and correctly wired.

Lgndkllr777

Same thing happened to my Jag-Stang when I got it... i got it re-wired and it still didnt work... so now its in the shop getting a new bridge pickup.

Nimbus

Is there a way to measure it electrically if the humbucker is ok or broken? Like resistance? If so, what is the resistance if it's ok or crap? A basic device for measuring resistance (and maybe few other electric units) doesn't cost very much in a hardware store. I'm just not the one person to say if it can help you with this problem or not.. 😡

If the humbucker is broken, you might just want to take advantage of the situation and replace it with a better one. Often used are DiMarzio, e.g. Super Distortion, or Seymour Duncan (e.g. JB), but you should of course think it through yourself; what do you want from the humbucker.

Of course it's annoying if you buy stuff and it's already broken, but if there's only one broken pickup and the rest of the guitar is intact, the best way to cope with it is probably to fix it.