Wiring Nightmares

[coolcat]

Help!

I've attempted my first wiring job...

Basically, here's the deal: I followed Fender Standard wiring schematics to a "T". The 5-way switch was already wired to the pots, so I was just swapping out the pu's. At first, the neck pu wouldn't work, so I switched t with the bridge, to see if it was faulty. Then it wouldn't work in the bridge. I tried another old pu and it worked. But, then I took it out and put the new ones in the bridge and middle (nothing in the neck). When it was like that , the switch was useless. they sounded exactly the same in ALL FIVE POSITIONS! Shouldn't I have gotten NO SOUND when I had the selector switched in the neck position? Now I'm wondering if my "faulty" pickup is faulty at all!? UGH!!!! Any clues?

Thanks for your help!

[G]

[donbenjy]

sounds like a faulty connection or, more likely theres a short circuti somewhere?

[Daniel Sorbera]

it sounds like your switch is to blame.

[daveq]

I'd be surprised if the switch went bad all of a sudden. I'd also be surprised if your pickups did the same.

Do you have a meter that you can measure ohm's with? (multi-meter or ohm-meter?). If you do, you can check your pickups and the switch pretty easily. If you really want to be sure about your pickups, just temporarily wire them directly to the tip of your output jack (bypass everything else - no volume pot, no switch, ...). That will tell you if your pickups are good. Don't forget to connect the ground wires on the pickups to the ground in your control cavity and/or jack.

Once you know this, you can take a look at your switch. You can use your meter to map out the switch connections and easily determine how to wire the pickups to it once you know which pins get connected in each selected position.

Another possible short-cut would be to assume your 5 way switch is a standard strat style and use a diagram off of a site such as guitarelectronics.com. It's a shot in the dark but could be another option for you if you don't have a meter.