Putting together my son's p-bass (built from scratch), having an issue with no sound output. Let me say I'm a certified electrician and my job is troubleshooting circuitry in industrial machines, so I have a very good grasp of electricity and how it works. To me, p-bass wiring is (or looks to be) super simple. I've wired several guitars and basses as well with no problems.
That being said, I'm stuck on this. I put in Fender custom '62 pickups, using 250k CTS audio taper pots for tone and volume. Using a .047uF cap. I can't get any output. The odd time I had the pickguard out and plugged in, I got some noise when tapping the pickup posts with a screwdriver. But then I put it back in the body and get nothing (sounds like just a loose connection, but everything looks good).
Then I remove it again and still get nothing. I have pulled it out 6 or 7 times, checked soldering, resoldered things that were potentially an issue, and had the same results.
Yes the cable is good. Yes the amp works. Yes I've checked nothing is shorting. Yes the pickups are reading right (about 5.3k Ohms each, in series, lines up with Fenders 10.5k spec).
One thing I'm wondering about is the pots themselves. I unwired them and checked resistance, and found that only one side reads resistance from terminal to wiper. The other side doesn't (it just reads OL). So I opened both pots up to compare, and I have no continuity from one of the terminals to the resistive strip. That seems weird to me, but both pots are the same internally. So maybe they are supposed to have no connection on one side of the pot? It's just a dead terminal? Never heard of that, but who knows?
In all the p-bass wiring diagrams, it shows the grounded volume pot terminal to be on the right (when the connections aim downwards). So, assuming there's a difference between one side and the other, I'm going to try wiring it backwards compared to the diagram and see if that works.
If that doesn't work I'm going to try replacing the wires from the pickups, maybe one of them is broken inside.
But I'm just shooting in the dark at this point, so if anyone can clarify any of this for me, I'd very much appreciate it. Thanks!
That being said, I'm stuck on this. I put in Fender custom '62 pickups, using 250k CTS audio taper pots for tone and volume. Using a .047uF cap. I can't get any output. The odd time I had the pickguard out and plugged in, I got some noise when tapping the pickup posts with a screwdriver. But then I put it back in the body and get nothing (sounds like just a loose connection, but everything looks good).
Then I remove it again and still get nothing. I have pulled it out 6 or 7 times, checked soldering, resoldered things that were potentially an issue, and had the same results.
Yes the cable is good. Yes the amp works. Yes I've checked nothing is shorting. Yes the pickups are reading right (about 5.3k Ohms each, in series, lines up with Fenders 10.5k spec).
One thing I'm wondering about is the pots themselves. I unwired them and checked resistance, and found that only one side reads resistance from terminal to wiper. The other side doesn't (it just reads OL). So I opened both pots up to compare, and I have no continuity from one of the terminals to the resistive strip. That seems weird to me, but both pots are the same internally. So maybe they are supposed to have no connection on one side of the pot? It's just a dead terminal? Never heard of that, but who knows?
In all the p-bass wiring diagrams, it shows the grounded volume pot terminal to be on the right (when the connections aim downwards). So, assuming there's a difference between one side and the other, I'm going to try wiring it backwards compared to the diagram and see if that works.
If that doesn't work I'm going to try replacing the wires from the pickups, maybe one of them is broken inside.
But I'm just shooting in the dark at this point, so if anyone can clarify any of this for me, I'd very much appreciate it. Thanks!
Thanks again.
