Short and sweet: I was given a vintage Strat as a gift, and it's a beautiful piece of work except for one
little thing... it doesn't seem to have any output. It has the right amount of
buzz for a Strat (especially the 1-3-5 positions on the switch), but the actual notes are barely audible. I have to turn my practice amp (a Vox Pathfinder 15) all the way up to hear a note.
I've checked the obvious bits; reflowed any questionable solder joints, pickups seem to be fine. The notes sound, they're just incredibly damn quiet. The amp is fine, cable is fine, so it
has to be the guitar. Is there something obvious/specific that I should check, or should I use this as an excuse to rewire and get fresh pots on it?
Edit: It might be worth noting that the guitar's wiring is
very, very standard.
Posts
EDIT: Or if you don't know, have you tried throwing some electric strings on it to see if it helps? I have a suspicion it will.
I know it seems really weird and obvious-seeming, but it would explain things, and I can completely see it happening. Someone is about to give away or sell a guitar, and they realize they haven't changed the strings in a while, so they grab a set and throw them on the guitar. Only it turns out they grabbed some nice Acoustic Bronze strings instead of some nice magnetic Nickel/Stainless Steel strings. Bronze is all sorts of shitty magnetics-wise, so the pickups just don't pick much up. You'd get the buzz because the electronics are all fine, they're just not getting much interruption of the magnetic field.
Stupid question but: are the pickup heights ok? Also, have you tried replacing or at least cleaning the output jack?
If this is the case, and fiddling with the tone controls and switching pickups with the switch makes no difference to the volume you can rule out those sections, which leaves you with the volume knob, the output jack and the wiring connected to these.
If you are getting around 10k its unlikely to be the electronics, and my guess would be Khavali is right.
But if it's a normal amount of hum and it doesn't get ridiculously loud when you crank your amp, I'm pretty certain it's a set of acoustic strings on there, which you need to take off right now or it'll rip the bridge straight out of the body.
hitting hot metal with hammers
The capacitor is fine, too, he checked it with a multimeter. And he replaced the wiring leading to the output jack, which didn't make a bit of difference.
The real problem is, this guitar is the only instrument he has up here - he doesn't have anything to test parts in. He could spend half a day with an overpriced bottle of electronic components cleaner patiently stripping all the old solder off everything, then carefully redoing all of the wiring, only to discover that hey, the wiring was actually fine, the problem must be somewhere else. At this point, I'm leaning towards thinking that the pots themselves, because the thing is about 30 years old and it really shows its age in some places. (The tuners were literally falling apart while he was replacing them). But we're in Canada, so going out to the local over-priced guitar shop and dropping $50 on a new set of pots would be an expensive way to figure out that they're not the problem either.
Any other suggestions?
I'm in Canada too and I can get pots for like $0.50. Unless you're above the perma-frostline you're doing it wrong.
You could get some 20K resistors and wire them in place of the pots. If your pots are 100K that should "lock" your output levels at ~80% or higher for higher pot values.
you could try taking them out of the CCT, locking your output at 100%.
Does it make a scratch sound when you turn the pots?
are you plugging into the amplified input on the amp?
have you checked to see if the amp is the problem and not the guitar?
As Kate pointed out (bless her for defending my honor. *blush*), I did indeed use the correct strings (EB Hybrid Slinky), so we can safely rule that out. I've resoldered most of the connections, so cold joints are ruled out. The amp is 100% fine, so that's out. That leaves either three dead pickups (unlikely), a wiring problem, or (as has been suggested) a problem in one of the pots. I was hoping somebody had seen this exact problem and could tell me "hey, your volume potentiometer is grounding out" or something, but no such luck, I guess.
It looks like I'm going to have to disassemble the whole pickguard and check the components one at a time. Thanks for the input, everyone.
Where? I'm not trying to be a smartass at all, I just haven't been able to find an electronics shop anywhere up here (I'm in London), and Fender 500k pots are $rape at the local guitar shop.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
here's a link to one that's $2.70 each
http://ca.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?qs=AJuy2W0p6tqpi4MHodFyVQ%3d%3d
As mentioned, though, I can't even find an electronics place locally, and the place penguin is linking me to is showing $20 to ship 3 pots (D:). If there's a reliable Canadian based electronics outlet that I should be looking at, I'm all ears, seriously.
Look to see if you can change the shipping option to Postal Priority rather than FedEx. FedEx does indeed start out at about $20 to Canada, but their shipping estimator is telling me that sending it USPS Global Priority Mail should only run you more like $8 to Canada.
Look for electronics parts distributors in Canada (google that).
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH