AVRI Gold Anodized Pickguard

kulit17

kulit17

Wal Collector #35
Jan 26, 2011
4,492
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Near Boston (South Shore Area)
#1
Anyone know if the PG supposed to be conductive? I took out my '58 AVRI white blonde out of hiding a couple weekends ago and experienced low volume issues. When I first got it everything sounded great and dandy like any P should.... I bought it new back in 2013, when they first came out and thought about selling it, but changed my mind and decided to keep her around. Fast forward to now and seeing there's some kind of issue, i decided to "take a peek" under the hood....

20171008_163819-jpg.jpg



I took out a meter to see if the PG was conductive....between the pots and jack, there was no continuity. I tried doing a search if anyone has this problem but came up with nil...... I pulled up the schematics for the bass and apparently this is how it is wired....
http://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/Original/10001/019-100A_SISD.pdf
 
#3
anyhu, i didn't mess with the PG too much, but i did make sure the pots and the jack were nice and secure to the PG, which didn't seem to do anything.....but i had some black vintage wire and jumped the grounds basically......would love to hear if anyone had any experiences with these PG's having issues and not conducting like they are supposed too.

20171008_163819AA.jpg
 
#4
kulit17 said:
i had some black vintage wire and jumped the grounds basically
Click to expand...
always a good idea anyway.

otherwise you're relying on a mechanical connection which can fail when a pot comes loose.

as for the aluminum pickguard, the fix would be to scrape away the gold anodized coating where the parts clamp on to get a good contact with the bare aluminum. might be good to do that even with your actual soldered ground wire, you want the metal pickguard to itself be grounded too for noise reduction.
 
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#5
I'm amazed that Fender did that. Anodizing is generally not conductive; it's actually a controlled layer of corrosion on the surface of the aluminum. So, they were depending on the threads and nut digging through the anodizing enough to get the main signal path??? Because they were too cheap to install one little jumper wire? That's stupid.

Yeah, the correct fix is to solder in the jumper wire from the ground terminal of the output jack to the ground part of the circuit. Don't waste your time trying to improve the conductivity through the anodized aluminum.
 
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#6
Bruce Johnson said:
I'm amazed that Fender did that. Anodizing is generally not conductive; it's actually a controlled layer of corrosion on the surface of the aluminum. So, they were depending on the threads and nut digging through the anodizing enough to get the main signal path??? Because they were too cheap to install one little jumper wire? That's stupid.
Yeah, the correct fix is to solder in the jumper wire from the ground terminal of the output jack to the ground part of the circuit. Don't waste your time trying to improve the conductivity through the anodized aluminum.
Click to expand...

ya, i thought the same thing. i'm just amazed that i wasn't able to find anyone mentioning this before. i contacted Fender and they weren't much help - all they told me was ya your warranty elasped..."ya thanks".....

walterw said:
might be good to do that even with your actual soldered ground wire, you want the metal pickguard to itself be grounded too for noise reduction.
Click to expand...

thanks for the tip, i'll add it the next time the P is out of hiding again. ;)
 
#7
Never popped the hood on a genuine vintage Fender bass with an anodized pickguard...

But no ground wire? If that's the way they actually used to do it, then they're carrying the "vintage" thing a little too far IMO.
 
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#8
Where did you check for continuity on the guard? I know the more recent AV's have a layer of nitro over the top side. That said, you might not have been able to detect any continuity anyway, as Bruce explained. I never had this issue with the AVRI's, but I always yanked the stock wiring and put in my own (an OCD thing...I'm WAY more confident in my wiring than Fenders). It drives me nuts to see the cap soldered that way.
 
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#9
petrus61 said:
Where did you check for continuity on the guard? I know the more recent AV's have a layer of nitro over the top side. That said, you might not have been able to detect any continuity anyway, as Bruce explained. I never had this issue with the AVRI's, but I always yanked the stock wiring and put in my own (an OCD thing...I'm WAY more confident in my wiring than Fenders). It drives me nuts to see the cap soldered that way.
Click to expand...

I took out the pots/jack and placed my probes were they "dug into" and got nothing. Just thought it was strange that it worked before and after sitting in the case for some time it decided not too.

still trying to search for a authentic vintage 58 P with a gold anodized with its hood popped open - since it colored me curious...but found this one being for sale (same AVRI type)

Vintage Fender 58 USA Precision P Bass LOADED PICKGUARD Bass Prewired Anodized!

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#13
So last update. I took of the PG again and did more troubleshooting. i took off the pots and the jack from the pickguard and did a bit more troubleshooting...i had placed a my meter probe around the area where the pots/jack mounted and it appeared there were small areas around the hole that scraped off some of the coating - exposing the aluminum of the PG which i'm assuming from the teeth of the lock washers:

31diHDKqLcL.jpg

I metered the exposed areas and was able to get continuity from the PG. I am assuming when i had the bass in the case for some time, the pot/jack assembly must've gotten loose somehow and lost a solid connection to the PG. I scraped the area a bit more to expose some more aluminum. to test it out, i took the jumpers that i had previously put in place and installed the pots/jack back on the pickguard. i made sure the nut hex of the pot/jack were nice and tight. I metered it and got solid continuity.

Problem solved. I decided to leave the jumpers off for now.
 
#14
Yes, that's exactly the problem. The anodizing itself is an insulator, and won't conduct electricity. To pass electricity through the pickguard from the pot to the jack, both the pot and the jack have to be tightened down on areas where the anodizing has been cleaned off or chipped or cut through. If either the pot or the jack loosens up, you lose continuity and the bass crackles or goes dead. And, any spot where you've exposed the bare aluminum is going to slowly corrode again. Which will break the continuity.

I stand by my assessment that this is shoddy engineering by Fender. Way too much risk of failure out in the field. They should have put a jumper wire on there.
 
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