Dave Sloven
Ambassador of DOOM!
A friend of mine has given me a couple of his guitars to have a look at.
One of them is experiencing problems with the signal weakening intermittently and then seems to come good; I am thinking this is a bit of sloppy wiring on my part when I connected the pickup directly to the jack a few years ago and it is flopping around and touching something. I will resolder it and and add some shrink wrap over the join, that will probably fix it. The jack itself seems okay
The other one is more tricky. He tested it on too low a volume so he didn't have a good diagnosis of what was happening. He thought there was no signal at all from the bridge pickup and being an Epi I just assumed it was the switch, so he went ahead and ordered a Switchcraft switch as a replacement. Now that I've had the chance to test it through my rig at gigging volume it is clear that there is a weak signal getting through from the bridge pickup and the switch appears to be functioning normally, at least in the mechanism. We will swap it out anyway given that he's spent the money on a Switchcraft but I doubt that it will fix the issue. The pots all have a normal sweep and the volume sweeps through the normal range just that it is very quiet and provides zero by way of gain. It had it running into the lead channel on my Peavey and it sounded like it was running into the clean channel with the volume rolled off to 7 or 8.
I am wondering what people here think it might be. I am hoping it is not the bridge P-90 and that it is something simple like a bad solder joint.
The other problem I found with the guitar is the the jack is slopping around. It has been played with a straight cable for a long time at gigs and he jumps around a lot and I'm sure has stepped on his cable more than once. The edges of the hole in the top seem a bit worn as a result but that hole also just looks a bit big. I am thinking that a Switchcraft jack might be a good idea, it would certainly be a tighter fit. But the switchcraft switch went into the guitar without routing too. This model seems to use a short type switch with a normal nut, not the deep nut. The poker chip also seems to be glued to the top.
The wiring inside all seems to be very neat, and I can't see any obvious issues besides the sloppy jack
One of them is experiencing problems with the signal weakening intermittently and then seems to come good; I am thinking this is a bit of sloppy wiring on my part when I connected the pickup directly to the jack a few years ago and it is flopping around and touching something. I will resolder it and and add some shrink wrap over the join, that will probably fix it. The jack itself seems okay
The other one is more tricky. He tested it on too low a volume so he didn't have a good diagnosis of what was happening. He thought there was no signal at all from the bridge pickup and being an Epi I just assumed it was the switch, so he went ahead and ordered a Switchcraft switch as a replacement. Now that I've had the chance to test it through my rig at gigging volume it is clear that there is a weak signal getting through from the bridge pickup and the switch appears to be functioning normally, at least in the mechanism. We will swap it out anyway given that he's spent the money on a Switchcraft but I doubt that it will fix the issue. The pots all have a normal sweep and the volume sweeps through the normal range just that it is very quiet and provides zero by way of gain. It had it running into the lead channel on my Peavey and it sounded like it was running into the clean channel with the volume rolled off to 7 or 8.
I am wondering what people here think it might be. I am hoping it is not the bridge P-90 and that it is something simple like a bad solder joint.
The other problem I found with the guitar is the the jack is slopping around. It has been played with a straight cable for a long time at gigs and he jumps around a lot and I'm sure has stepped on his cable more than once. The edges of the hole in the top seem a bit worn as a result but that hole also just looks a bit big. I am thinking that a Switchcraft jack might be a good idea, it would certainly be a tighter fit. But the switchcraft switch went into the guitar without routing too. This model seems to use a short type switch with a normal nut, not the deep nut. The poker chip also seems to be glued to the top.
The wiring inside all seems to be very neat, and I can't see any obvious issues besides the sloppy jack
