I need help with my electric guitar wiring, anyone up for it?

funboy6942 · Saturday at 10:56 AM

I changed my humbuckers for the first time, and I wired it exactly as it should be, ground to ground pot, split coil wires tied together, and hot to the switch, in the exact places the other coil was soldered to. The original coils had just two wires, hot and ground.

After changing them my sound has become super muddy, and the #1 string doesn't even register anymore on the neck and bridge. No mater where I adjust my bucks I get ZERO noise from my amp.

Soooooo....... I decided the coils must be crap and wired in the oem bucks, back to exactly the way they were wired, and yet I STILL get ZERO sound from the #1, and the other strings are muddy sounding.

WTH did I do wrong?? This guitar was playing perfectly, and I wanted to upgrade to some "better" coils, plus they were see thru and got to see the innerds but now I got this problem. I have checked, rechecked, and tripple rechecked my wiring to make sure all wires are connected, and they all are, so what would of caused this?

I am at a loss and look ever so forward to some suggestions, for I hate not being able to play, even though I suck at it, it still makes the world a little better for me :O

OH, and I'm using brand new Dr Strings strings that I have always used, but they are brand new, so strings isn't it either

IBMJunkman · Saturday at 3:32 PM

Time to go acoustic. 😊

lxskllr · Saturday at 4:36 PM

I don't understand why a single string wouldn't play. Should be all or nothing. /Maybe/ if the pickup was severely out of level. Is it the correct distance from the strings? That distance will vary per pickup/string combo. Too close and they choke the string off. Too far, and it sounds indistinct. I'm mainly familiar with single coil pickups, cause they're obviously the best :^P

funboy6942 · Saturday at 6:39 PM

I have an acoustic as well, but I like to rock out at times. As for the one string thing, all was working fine, I replaced coils, then muted/muddy strings, and then reinstalled the oem coils back the same way they were installed with the same problem.

Thats whats getting me, for this is all analog, and it should be playing just fine after installing the coils back the way they were but its not. Im going to replace my strings for shiggles for I dont know what else would cause this

lxskllr · Saturday at 6:47 PM

Pickups are the same distance from the strings? Are you sure?

funboy6942 · Sunday at 8:41 AM

I have moved the pickups to numerous levels, even right up on the string to where it would almost touch the coil, to all the way down into the body, and everywhere between.

But here is the killer, I swapped out the #1 string for an acoustic #1, and it now makes noise :O I am dumbfounded that it went from making ZERO sound to now its at least trying, and the strings I bought I have bought 9 times before, for other guitars mind you with no problems, but why in the world would my strings be the problem when they never was before?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002H0SWQ?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

its either those I use or some fenders and up till this point I have never had a problem, but will be replacing the strings with a full set of acoustics, all I have on hand and Id much rather waste a $2 set of strings, then another $11+ set and report back if anyone cares.

nakedfrog · Monday at 1:17 PM

That doesn't make much sense, the high E is typically plain steel in either case--though perhaps being a thicker gauge has helped the magnetic field register with the pickup, or is generating more overtones? In any case... changing the strings isn't going to fix whatever issue you inadvertently caused with the wiring. Do you have a tone control on your guitar? It almost sounds to me like something is going on that's filtering out all your higher frequencies, maybe the tone capacitor has gotten goofed up during these adventures, given that putting the original pickups back in didn't fix the problem. My local shop quoted me $50 to swap pickups, haven't dropped off my axe yet, but I want to support them and not have to spend time with issues like this

Edit: I'm assuming that by #1 string you mean high E--and I see now you'd had coated strings on there, I have some DR color-coated strings but haven't put them on an instrument yet.

funboy6942 · Monday at 1:49 PM

changing strings did do nothing, I'm at a total loss atm, I've checked the wiring a billion time, my soldering (which I am good at), and the vol and tone knobs work, this is such bs

I've had nothing but good luck with those string on my other guitars, and the fact that it still does it when I wired the other coils back into it (2 wires, a monkey can solder it), and yet it still sounds like dookie.

nakedfrog · Monday at 1:59 PM

I mean obviously something is wrong somewhere? Have you gone through all the other wiring, beyond just the pickups themselves? The poles are correctly aligned with the strings, yeah?

sdifox · Monday at 2:07 PM

Did you actually test the pickup coil for continuity?

funboy6942 · 2025-04-29T16:53:17-0400

I know that something has to be wrong, but Ive checked ALL wiring on it, and its all attached, and all I did was remove the coils, and not any of the other wiring. As for checking the coils no I did not, for at this point I have had 4 coils all doing the same thing, and again, I soldered in the oem coils back in which have but 2 wires, a hot and a ground, and stuck them back in in exactly the same way it was, but yet Im having the problem now with even the oem coils, I am pulling my hair and teeth out on this one, for it make ZERO sense to me to have it continue to be messed up even with the coils it had before and the guitar sounded good.

nakedfrog · 2025-04-29T16:56:27-0400

Maybe it's time to start removing things from the equation? Can you solder one pickup so it's wired directly to the jack, bypassing all pots/switches? Or just bypass the tone control circuit, etc?

repoman0 · 2025-04-29T17:28:47-0400

Ground issue? Is your bridge grounded? Can you post pics?

nakedfrog · 2025-04-29T17:56:12-0400

repoman0 said:
Ground issue? Is your bridge grounded? Can you post pics?

I wondered that too, I guess I implicitly figured he'd checked ground if all the wiring is the same, but who knows?

funboy6942 · 2025-04-30T08:57:02-0400

yup ground is good, and I never had to remove it or even touch it, its grounded to the spring thing and to the pot all perfectly fine, and I just checked it all again for shizzles and still, nothing loose, come apart. The killer thing for me is it was working good, removed coils and it all started, replaced coils back to oem, with again just a hot and ground leads so not to hard to figure out, and the old coils are doing the same thing, both of them, just like the new ones were doing.

This should be so simple due to it all just being analog, and I wire up home theaters, and fix computers, so working on this, though this was my first time, was rather simple, so I thought, but with it all analog, I should be seeing a wire lose, cut, melted, something, and I looked at each and everyone of them, and checked their solder joints, and I find ZERO wrong

I even thought it was my wireless rx/tx so I changed it to a straight cable with the same results as well. Thought maybe my amp, so I hooked it to my party speaker with a guitar input, again with same results, so wth :/

repoman0 · 2025-04-30T09:04:22-0400

Your tone pot along with the capacitor form a low pass filter with a switchable center frequency (by turning the knob). Maybe you damaged one or both with the heat from the soldering iron. Can you try bypassing the tone knob? You can just jump it with small alligator clips to test.

edit: missed nakedfrog’s post suggesting this. Still start with the tone control though since it is designed as an LPF in the first place and you have a low pass on your output.

funboy6942 · 2025-04-30T09:04:38-0400

nakedfrog said:
Maybe it's time to start removing things from the equation? Can you solder one pickup so it's wired directly to the jack, bypassing all pots/switches? Or just bypass the tone control circuit, etc?

huh, I can try that I suppose, though as mentioned only wiring I touched in it was strictly the coil wires I never touched, moved, melted, cut, any of the other wires

funboy6942 · 2025-04-30T09:07:40-0400

repoman0 said:
Your tone pot along with the capacitor form a low pass filter with a switchable center frequency (by turning the knob). Maybe you damaged one or both with the heat from the soldering iron. Can you try bypassing the tone knob? You can just jump it with small alligator clips to test.

I have the ground on the vol and didnt come anywhere near the tone with the cap on it, and the vol and tone knobs still work when I twist them. I have no clips so Id have to desolder and resolder, but again, I only removed the wires for the coils, didnt touch the ground, the only pot that got "hot" from my iron would be the vol pot, but its working just fine.

And moving the switch works going between the coils you can hear, though muddy, changes being made as you go through the 3 positions.

funboy6942 · 2025-04-30T09:09:35-0400

I have my switch for sale on fb marketplace and if it sells Im just going to buy another GRGR120ex from Guitar center and call this one a total loss

anyone wanna buy a switch

repoman0 · 2025-04-30T09:11:20-0400

I mean going and buying a $5 clip would make testing and figuring out where the problem is trivial. Both pickups obviously aren’t bad, your ground is good so you have something in the volume and tone control network busted. It is just about the simplest circuit possible.

funboy6942 · 2025-04-30T09:17:18-0400

even though I didnt heat the tone pot at all or come close to it? Yeah I could go to HF thats about 40 min away and get some, need them anyways, and test that, and I have spare new pots in my parts box, so I could just say heck with it and change it out :O

My buddies birthday is coming up in august and I usually give him stuff to smash and demolish, and I am thinking big time on buying another Ibanez (had to sell my other to make ends meet) and give him this to smash into pieces

repoman0 · 2025-04-30T09:24:04-0400

Well the volume pot can affect the whole lpf network too. If it’s damaged from heat it could get a capacitance I guess and make its own filter. It’s probably easier to diagnose which component failed.

Something not that complicated or hard to figure out (with the right tools) is broken though and you’ll be happier just fixing it than buying a new guitar

funboy6942 · 2025-04-30T09:36:34-0400

If it were the tone knob, why would that mute the high E #1 string?

funboy6942 · 2025-04-30T09:38:24-0400

repoman0 said:
Well the volume pot can affect the whole lpf network too. If it’s damaged from heat it could get a capacitance I guess and make its own filter. It’s probably easier to diagnose which component failed.

Something not that complicated or hard to figure out (with the right tools) is broken though and you’ll be happier just fixing it than buying a new guitar

This is a cheap poc I got off fb for $40 so I wouldnt mind going back to a "name brand" guitar at all. But for shizzles Im gonna pull out the tone pot, and replace it for I got like 19 of them left.

repoman0 · 2025-04-30T09:46:18-0400

If you’re going to throw parts at it you might as well replace the volume too

Make sure the values match obviously and match what you are taking out.

I need help with my electric guitar wiring, anyone up for it?

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