somedaysurfer

Thanks for that. That is indeed my plan, but short of doing the re-soldering I mentioned in the original post, I don't know what else to change. Oh well, I think I could probably live without tone and volume control, honestly. One thing though - I noticed when I originally opened the tele to install a Seymour Duncan Little 59 back in December, it was wired backward from the diagram included with the pickup. That is, the way the leads on the pots seemed to be a mirror image of what was depicted in the instructions, so I just followed them accordingly. Basically everything was great until I tried replacing the neck pickup (which I decided to do because my favorite guitar tone is, in nearly any case, two humbuckers blended together.) Also, the SD diagram shows the capacitor on the tone pot being soldered only to the tone pot, but when I first opened the tele, the cap itself was linking the tone and volume pots. ...My plan now is to just re-wire the whole thing exactly as shown in the SD diagram. Wish me luck.

I posted a dilemma I was having a few days ago but wanted to start with a simpler question to try to fix it: I'm trying to install an old humbucker with a single conductor line into the neck position on my telecaster. For all the diagrams available online telling you how to install modern humbuckers, I have yet to find a single one that tells how to put one like mine into a telecaster. My best guess was to solder the outer sleeve (the ground, as I understand it) to the back of the volume pot, then solder the inner black wire (the hot output, right?) to the pickup selector. Now, as previously stated, while this configuration allowed both pickups to work, it seems to have rendered the volume and tone pots unable to do anythign but carry a charge. In other words, when I twist either knob, nothing at all happens. As suggested by other members of the forum, I am going to go through and double-check to make sure all the solder points are solid. Admittedly, some of those connections were kinda gnarly, with maybe only half the inner strands making contact, for example. But I wanted to at least make sure I had the right idea with connecting the neck pickup.

Thanks to both of you. I had no problem installing the bridge pickup many months ago, but I think I may have gotten in over my head in trying to install a second. It's weird because it seems like all the solder points are solid. I should have noted I soldered the outside sleeve of the neck pickup to the point at which the bridge bucker's black wire and ground meet the volume pot. The hot output is soldered onto the pickup selector. Somehow, like I said, the tone and volume just don't seem to do anything but carry a current. I tried messing with the pickup height, and when I lower the neck pickup to nearly level with the pickguard, there's a much bigger contrast between all three pickup positions. It's weird that the neck pu seems dominant, though, considering the Little 59 is really hot. I'll try to get a pic posted of my wiring. Prepared to be horrified.

So I bought a neck pickup from a 68 SG and installed it in the neck of a MIM telecaster I had already outfitted with a Seymour Duncan Little 59 in the bridge. I then replaced the 250k volume pot with a 500k (woulda done the same with the tone, but I can't get the damn knob to unscrew - it's already killed two jeweler's screwdrivers). First of all, the thing sounds wonderful now, but it does some weird things. First - the volume and tone pots seem to have no bearing whatsoever on altering the volume or tone. In fact, aside from the fact that the SD is now much brigher, they don't seem to do anything at all. I believe this is because the neck pu had a single conductor and was meant for a Gibson, which always has separate pots for each pickup. Is that what's going on? Also - There seems to be little or no difference in the sound the guitar produces when the pickup switch is supposed to be activating both pickups and when it's supposed to just activate the neck. I've been listening hard, and there's just really not much difference at all. Big contrast on the bridge position, though. It should be noted that I'm a novice at this stuff and because this guitar was very cheap, I'm just having some fun, so please don't jump all over me for not going to a tech. Finally, like I said, I really love the sounds this thing produces now, but something is certainly awry with the wiring even though I took great care in hooking it up according to diagrams from the Seymour Duncan web site.