Should be an easy electronics question

[Kitsapbass]

So I have an Ibanez SR406 with a broken potentiometer. Spins in 360 degrees with no adjustment. Besides replacing the pot, could I just solder the leads together? I'm going to eventually replace the whole electronics package, but right now it seems that it was broken in the fully turned off position, because compared to every other bass I have it sounds dull. All my other basses are on the bright side tonally, so it really sticks out. Looking forward to hearing some responses.

 

[saabfender]

Just put a new pot on. If you want to experiment with the wiring, that'll be fun while you're in there.

But you should fix it immediately otherwise it's broken. If you ever want to sell it, you have to fix anyway.

 

[Kitsapbass]

Just put a new pot on. If you want to experiment with the wiring, that'll be fun while you're in there.

But you should fix it immediately otherwise it's broken. If you ever want to sell it, you have to fix anyway.

Most likely won't sell. This was a "trouble on the farm" kind of sale, from a friend - who at this point isn't even playing anymore. I'm 99% certain it's in the stable for keeps. Issue is it's a micro pot...so I'm not 100% sure I have one. I'll have to check first.

 

[saabfender]

Those push-pull pots are small. You might use this opportunity to do something creative with one or two of them.

 

[Kitsapbass]

Not push-pull. This is a 90s era SR406, out of the Cort factory. Passive pickups, active preamp. According to other posts I've seen the weak link is the preamp, so I'm not even sure it wouldn't just behoove me to get rid of it and run passive.

 

[Kitsapbass]

And it turns out it be a moot point. Circuit board. So it's looks like I'll be wiring it up like a Passive J until I can drop a few C notes on this.

 

[Killed_by_Death]

If this is what your wiring looks like, you can revamp it:

Looks like the pickups are passive & don't require power.
If that's the case you can rewire the whole thing with new potentiometers & make it passive.

I would suggest:
neck volume
bridge volume
3-way pickup selector
treble cut
bass cut

The pickup selector switch is just a way to fill up one of the 3-band EQ holes that are left from remving the preamp.

 

[Timpanogos Slim]

Replacing a pot on a pc board is only marginally more difficult than one with wire leads. If you were local to me i would tell you to bring it over. It does help to have some solder wick because a solder sucker doesn't always clear the through-holes. Assuming that there are through-holes.

as a guy who is handy with a soldering iron i can't help but believe that there is a way to un-dull that board. Google hasn't turned up a schematic, though, or forum/blog posts about modifying them.