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Installed prewired pickups/pickguard but very low sound


coldfire334

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Hi, I just bought a pickguard that came prewired with the pickups for my monoprice strat style guitar. Here is the link  

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HF3FI4S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I soldered the two wires to input jack but there is barely any sound. I turned the volume of the guitar and the amp all the way up. I have to turn on the gain to hear the little bit of sound that comes from tapping the screwdriver on the pickup. I put the low E string on and tried to pick it and I got very little sound (mind you everything is still turned to max volume with the gain turned up as well). I followed different diagrams and everything seems to be in place. I even re-soldered the wires that were already soldered just to make sure there was no short circuit but still no luck. Now when I installed my original ones, they are giving me the same problem :/

 Here is the images for the wiring:   

https://imgur.com/gallery/7sMmdzm

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Do you have loads of noise (hum/buzz) and no sound, or no noise and no sound? 

Total loss of signal with any pickup selected would indicate that the fault lies on the common parts of the circuit. That would be either the volume pot, selector switch or output jack. Visually everything looks OK, but I'd focus on these three areas.

It's possible that you have a faulty volume pot. An internal short to the case could cause what you describe. An internal short in the selector switch would also cause this issue, but is less likely.

It's unlikely that all three pickups are faulty in the same way and the tone pots should only be in circuit when the neck or middle pickups are selected, so you can disregard those for now.

I will say that there appears to be an error on the selector switch where the two tone pots are connected, in that I can't see how it's possible that they could operate as intended. But that shouldn't be causing your lack of sound and is a separate issue altogether.

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On 5/14/2020 at 10:16 PM, curtisa said:

Do you have loads of noise (hum/buzz) and no sound, or no noise and no sound? 

Total loss of signal with any pickup selected would indicate that the fault lies on the common parts of the circuit. That would be either the volume pot, selector switch or output jack. Visually everything looks OK, but I'd focus on these three areas.

It's possible that you have a faulty volume pot. An internal short to the case could cause what you describe. An internal short in the selector switch would also cause this issue, but is less likely.

It's unlikely that all three pickups are faulty in the same way and the tone pots should only be in circuit when the neck or middle pickups are selected, so you can disregard those for now.

I will say that there appears to be an error on the selector switch where the two tone pots are connected, in that I can't see how it's possible that they could operate as intended. But that shouldn't be causing your lack of sound and is a separate issue altogether.

Thanks for the detail. So for some reason the amp was not picking up the screwdriver tap. I tried another amp and same thing but when I put everything together and strum the strings the amp picked it up. So I'm not sure why that happened

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