The Rickenbarner - my first fully scratch-build!

[mapleglo]

Nope. That's not it. I wired one of the pickups straight to the jack and it worked fine.

At this point, if it were me, I'd start testing everything, from the other pickup, to measuring each pot function and the switch with the meter. One reason I dislike soldering the ground to the back of each pot, is that the heat from the soldering iron can be enough to destroy the pot, especially for those of us who do not do this quite so often.

 

[Aceonbass]

The back of the pot is actually the best place to solder a ground because its furthest from the actual circuit board, but you do need to work fast as the soldering iron operates at around 430 degrees. Soldering to the side could melt the pot cam. It's also important to keep solder away from the small hole adjacent to the middle lug. This hole is actually a stamping that acts as a start/stop point for that cam.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Other than thoroughly cleaning the grease and oxidation off the back of the pot, and using a good hot iron with a well tinned clean tip, what's the secret to doing this quickly? The pot acts like a giant heat sink in my experience. I've used forceps to isolate caps and such while soldering leads, is there a similar trick with pots? I've re-soldered wires to an existing blob of solder on a pot, but never from scratch.

Ron, hope I'm not hijacking your thread with this stuff!

 

[RaniBrandt]

No, it's fine, we're all trying to learn stuff here!

 

[wraub]

I have found that a light sanding or scraping on the back of the pot helps lots.

 

[Aceonbass]

This is my weapon of choice when it comes to soldering. The Wall Lenk LG400.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

That thing is badass Buck Rogers. I have a Weller with the separate base and a remote iron, seems to work well, and gets plenty hot. Maybe hot enough to destroy pots if I put my mind to it.

 

[Jisch]

If you have tinning paste that you use when you tin copper pipes, put a dab of that on after sanding and before tinning. You definitely want to tin the pot before you try to solder a wire on there.

 

[RaniBrandt]

Okay, here's what it looks like right now:

Can anybody figure out what I'm doing wrong? I eliminated the stereo and switching mono jacks, hoping that simplifying would help. Still no dice. Buzzing, no bass sounds. With this setup, the buzzing lessens when I touch the strings.

Note that this is not the wiring according to RIC, this is according to Aceonbass' harness description.

 

[Aceonbass]

This is NOTHING like RIC wiring or the pics I sent you of the wiring diagrams I use, which are per RIC specs. I also see 500K CTS pots in the volume positions (which should be on the bottom for both pickups) which is only correct for humbucking pickups. Vintage RIC specs (the ones I use) specify 250K volume pots. Other than the ground to the back of the pots (which look like cold solder joints to me) there is nothing correct about this wiring. Look at the pic I posted earlier on this thread, and you'll see a correctly wired harness for a single coil 4001/3 with ROS (mono/stereo) output. While the output jacks are different, the body of the harness is the same. For mono output, a jumper wire is soldered between both C3 jacks of the volume pots, and the hot output wire goes from there to the jack.

 

[Jisch]

I agree, those are cold solder joints, if there is connectivity right now, it won't be there for long. There is an opportunity for oxidation to occur between the solder and the pot, and a simple tug of the wire will probably pull it off.

 

[RaniBrandt]

Aceonbass, the only thing I did differently from your description was to switch the volume and tone pot positions, as I wanted to have the volumes on top when the pickguard is in place. If you look closely, you'll see that the 500K pots are the tone pots, just as you have them in your description.

 

[RaniBrandt]

I don't know what that means, but I've always wired my ground joints this way, and it's always worked before. What should I be doing instead of this?

 

[RaniBrandt]

Okay, I looked up what a cold solder joint is, so I get that. But would that be the reason that I get no sound at all, just buzzing? I get that it might be noisy, but shouldn't I still be able to get some output when I pluck the strings, even if my grounding is iffy?

 

[mapleglo]

I'm the first to admit that I don't play around with my Ric wiring. I'm a little confused how that crazy switch works. But this doesn't look right:

The white arrow I've drawn is pointing to what appears to be the center connection of the switch. To me, that is the output of the switch - I would think - that sends either or both pickup outputs to the volume and tone controls. Yet, when I follow one of the orange wires coming off that center connection, it goes directly to ground. Thus, no output signal. Unless I'm mistaken about the way that switch works.

 

[Jisch]

Yes, sorry, I didn't follow the whole thing, just responding to those solder joints. Bad joints there would cause buzzing, probably not "no sound". It appears that the red wire coming off the jack is only getting it's ground from that first pot, so if there is no electrical connection there, it could very well cause a no output situation (it's unlikely, but possible. Beyond that it's pretty hard to trouble shoot with just a picture. I would use an ohm meter and check for ground continuity all the way through as a starting point, then check to ensure there is connectivity for each soldered connection.

Sorry if I sound harsh, not my intent, but troubleshooting with a picture over the 'net is nearly impossible for me, I'm no expert.

 

[RaniBrandt]

Mapleglo, according to everything I've seen on these switches, that is the ground lug. It goes through the middle and straight down to the plate. The hot leads are on either side of that.

 

[RaniBrandt]

Jisch, yeah, I just checked connectivity of all grounds, including the one to the jack. It's all good. SO ***???????

 

[mapleglo]

Why is there a ground lug on the switch? Doesn't that just switch the hots off of the pickups? And then why would the second lead off of that same center connector go to the center connector of one of the pots? and one of the legs of that pot going to ground? This doesn't make sense to me.

 

[mapleglo]

Jisch, yeah, I just checked connectivity of all grounds, including the one to the jack. It's all good. SO ***???????

I'd check continuity between each hot of the pickup to ground. I think you are grounding the hot outputs of the pickups.