Even the Pro's Screw Up Sometimes!

[duhvoodooman***]

Nelskie already posted a reference to this little fiasco, so I thought I'd document the whole sordid tale here, so other Fretters can be on the lookout for this easy-to-make mistake:

Back in March, I had the stock humbuckers in my new Epi LP Std. replaced with two Seymour Duncan p'ups--a '59 in the neck and a Pearly Gates at the bridge. As a novice to guitar electronics, I opted to take the LP to a local guitar shop that is widely considered the best in our area for this kind of thing. I opted for the simple, standard humbucker hook-up; nothing fancy, at all. They did the work promptly, and everything seemed to work fine. I was a bit surprised that the bridge p'up had a quite a biting, trebly tone, but figured that must just be "the nature of the beast"--bridge p'ups are supposed to be trebly, right? Since this was my first humbucker guitar, I really had no frame of reference. I commenced to banging away on it happily. Until....

The other day, as I was preparing for my upcoming Dot rewiring project, I decided to open up the back cover on my LP and look at how the p'ups were physically wired to the volume and tone pots. Now, I've been looking at a whole bunch of Duncan wiring diagrams recently, so I'm quite familiar with the wire coloring scheme they use. And as soon as I looked at how the bridge p'up was wired in, I said to myself, "Wait a minute--that ain't right!"

What the shop had done was to connect the wrong two wires together coming out of the p'up. They should have connected the white (screw coil -) and red (stud coil +) together to put the two coils into series, for a standard 2-conductor humbucker connection to the guitar. The remaining two wires then connect to the bridge volume pot input and to ground. Instead, they connected the white to the black (screw coil +), creating a dead short for the screw coil. Consequently, I was permanently in single coil mode with the stud coil! So I had brightness & clarity out the wazoo, at the expense of volume (though not as much as you'd think; it's not a linear effect), fatness and loss of hum-cancelling.

Apparently, the mistake occurred because whoever did the wiring had used the DiMarzio wire color convention rather than the Duncan (yeah, they're different--bummer, huh?). It's an easy mistake to make, but I really would have expected better from professionals. Just goes to show, nobody is immune to error.

Anyway, 10 minutes with the soldering iron, and all was fixed. Let me tell you, it's not thin & trebly anymore! I was wailing away through my Valve Jr. last night, and I was awash in a sea of fat, crunchy goodness! It's like a whole new guitar. Now I know why they call that pickup model the "Pearly Gates"!! Heavenly tones on tap, for sure!

In retrospect, the other sign that something was wrong with the LP was how much fuller the bridge p'up on my new Dot sounded. But again, I figured that was just a difference between the two different kinds of p'ups and the two very different body types. Live and learn, I guess....

Just wanted to pass it along, in case anybody else here ever traverses this rocky road.

[Nelskie]

Wha? No credit for that Tex-a-fied, sex-a-fied, bad dog of a Tone Driver setting that lil' ol' PG was sizzlin' thru? Anyways - glad she's barkin' loud fur' you now, DVM. Those be some sweet tones you got there.

[duhvoodooman***]

Wha? No credit for that Tex-a-fied, sex-a-fied, bad dog of a Tone Driver setting that lil' ol' PG was sizzlin' thru?

Oops! Yep, that was an oversight. The TB was in there between axe & amp, doing it's part. I don't run the VJr up high enough to generate that much break-up here in my little back room. But, to give credit where it's due, those Tex-a-fied settings blew in from the Great Northern Plains, up ND way!!

[tremoloman***]

When I had my Jazzmaster bridge pickup replaced a couple of months ago, it sounded out of phase to me when I got it home and tried it out. It sounded OK, but it didn’t have that deep bass twang I love so much.

I brought it back to the dealer the next day and he tried it out. It did sound better on his amp and he was convinced it had been installed properly. Just to double check, he quickly switched the wiring. We plugged it in again and the difference was tremendous. The sound was 1000x better. He just shrugged smiling and said “Sorry man…”.

Now my good friend really knows his stuff, but even the pros make mistakes. As Billy Joel once sang: “We’re only human”

[duhvoodooman***]

I think this just goes to show what a valuable skill soldering is, if you can do your own. Saves lots of time (and a few dinero) to be able to do your own guitar mods, and you're likely to be much more careful and finicky about the quality of the work than somebody who may have to crank out ten or twenty of these a day....