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I just installed an RS Guitarworks upgrade kit but have a problem: volume controls don't go all the way off. Help?


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My '77 Ibanez Destroyer has been a bit muddy sounding for a while now, so I decided to try the RS Guitarworks Modern Explorer/Flying V Upgrade kit.

After installing the kit, the guitar sounds much better. The proverbial "blanket" indeed seems gone and the guitar has its high-end detail back and I'm delighted about that.

However, I must have wired something incorrectly, as neither the neck or bridge volume controls will turn off completely. The volume controls seem to operate fairly normally, gradually reducing the volume level as the knob is turned down. But when the knob is turned all the way down the guitar is still quite audible, although fairly low in its output. (The tone control seems fine and normal.)

Is there a particular wiring mistake I might have made? Something I should redo?

My initial guess is that the wiring that primarily connects the three pots might be incorrect. In the photo on the RS website of the pre-wired kit (see link below), it seems to show the wire soldered to the BACK of the pots. That's how I wired them. But as I look at the photo again, it almost looks like it could be soldered to one of the pot LEGS of the two volume controls. Or am I seeing things?

Here's the kit wiring on the RS site: https://rs-guitarworks.myshopify.com/collections/pre-wired-modernupgrade-kits/products/pre-wired-modern-explorer-upgrade-kit

At any rate, if any of the experts are familiar with this type of wiring and can point me in the right direction for fixing it, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks guys!

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You weren't wrong to solder to the back of the pot, but... that's the ground wire, and is soldered to to first lug of the volume pot, which is bent over to also be soldered to the back. Without that side of the pot connected to ground, you'll never get silence.

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ground1.png.076a556414e42bb404de2dbbe3d4ed8d.png

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You guys are the best! Thanks so much. That was super helpful. I had no idea that the ground wire had to be connected to a lug of the volume pots. That did the trick.

For anyone who has the same situation and finds this thread, I also found this video from RS Guitarworks themselves to be very helpful. The technique of bending the lug up against the pot and soldering it to the back of the pot was new to me and worked well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqmioqe-_Xo

Also, I have to say that the RS Guitarworks Modern Upgrade kit did just what I hoped it would. My old '77 Destroyer has always been a cool guitar, but was always kind of dark sounding, so I never used it that much. But after comparing its sound to that of some of my other guitars, I got to thinking that the darkness of the sound might be coming from something about the old pots and wiring that were in there. That seems to have been the case, since the guitar now has all kinds of top end detail to it that it's never had before. I'm kind of sorry that I never did something about it years ago. It would have gotten played way more! At any rate, thanks again for your help!

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...and for extra credit, let's play a round of "how did stonge f* this up?"

my homebuilt tele has a typical 50's cap on the tone control that takes the tone to mud at about 3 on the dial (which works fine for me).  When it gets right to the end of travel on the pot, it suddenly loses the mud and goes straight to shiny brightly tele like the cap isn't even there.  I can photo my terrible soldering for humor purposes (or just to make everyone feel better about their soldering skills), but how could the pot bypass the cap at the very end of travel (slammed up against the low stop)?

 

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There are bypass potentiometers (at the end of its sweep, the potentiometer is taken out of the circuit).  Could you have one of those, perhaps?  If not, the function of any potentiometer is reliant on sweep (the progressive resistance of the band).  It could be you have an audio-taper potentiometer (logarithmic sweep) and might prefer a linear taper (even sweep throughout).  Audio taper is purposed specifically for volume controls due to the way the human ear perceives changes in volume, but these are commonly used for tone controls, too (and actually preferred by many).

Some things to try: pull the potentiometer out, but the knob back on it and measure resistance at each point in the sweep (10 - 0).  This should show what kind of pot you have.  ETA: IF you have a bypass pot, the resistance at "10" will be infinite (i.e., no connection).

You could then experiment with different pot values.  Additionally, the capacitor itself could be something to experiment with.  If you have the traditional 50's Fender cap (0.1 μF), you might be better served with a lower value.  The value of capacitor is going to affect the frequency of treble roll-off.  I much prefer the roll-off of a 0.022 μF, even on single coils (with the traditional 250k pots).

Sorry if you knew all of this.  If not, the great news is all of these components are really inexpensive.

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A bypass peotentiometer is commonly known as a 'no load' pot. I use them as blend knobs in Strats...

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