Knackered my Vol pot?

sorbz62 · July 2023

I always had massive loss of top end when I rolled the vol pot back on my Charvel DK24 so I bought a treble bleed kit from Northwest guitars. It was quite tight with wires everwhere in the cavity but I was successful in soldering it onto the correct lugs.

The issue now is that, yes, the tone maintains it treble-ness when rolling back but I now have max volume when the pot is completely off, ie it sounds good but all volume returns when the pot is fully off.

Have I knackered the pot or what? I can't think what I may have done, other than using a shitty soldering iron.

Any advice would be most welcome

Cheers,
Jim

Funkfingers · July 2023

Photographs of your wiring would help remote diagnosis.

It is possible that you have overheated the innards of the volume pot. Applying excess pressure to the pot shaft can force the wiper and track apart.

It is possible that you have misunderstood the treble bypass wiring instructions and connected it in reverse. For all I know, you and your guitar could be left-handed.

sorbz62 · July 2023

Funkfingers said:

Photographs of your wiring would help remote diagnosis.

It is possible that you have overheated the innards of the volume pot. Applying excess pressure to the pot shaft can force the wiper and track apart.

It is possible that you have misunderstood the treble bypass wiring instructions and connected it in reverse. For all I know, you and your guitar could be left-handed.

Is it a one-way circuit? I didnt know that.

I never pressed on the pot at all, just on the lugs to solder the treble bleed kit.

Dave_Mc · July 2023

Maybe you dislodged the ground lug/wire of the volume pot? (Someone will be along presently to tell me that wouldn't do that!)

BillDL · July 2023

Is this the kit you bought?

https://northwestguitars.co.uk/products/sprague-sprague-orange-drop-treble-bleed-kit

0.001 uf capacitor and 130k resistor.

Image: https://tfb-user-images.eu-central-1.linodeobjects.com/abd1db24a27f659688eaebabba7618c7f69fcedf3f68a051ed

sorbz62 · July 2023

Yep. Thats the badger.

Jonathangus · July 2023

Dave_Mc said:

Maybe you dislodged the ground lug/wire of the volume pot? (Someone will be along presently to tell me that wouldn't do that!)

No, that's exactly what it'll do. If the third lug isn't grounded, there's nowhere to bleed the signal to, so turning the volume down will have no effect.

Funkfingers · July 2023

The signal should not be bleeding anywhere.

The cap/resistor network is a treble bypass. It allows selected frequencies to bypass the resistance track of the volume pot almost until the control knob is turned down to zero.

The volume shooting back to maximum when it should be zero suggests either a bad ground connection, a physical short circuit or damage to the resistance track.

By "in reverse", I meant the wrong pair of terminals on the volume pot. The NWG illustration follows the convention of showing the pot as viewed from below. Thus, it is correct for right-handed guitar circuits.

sorbz62 · July 2023

Thanks,

I'll take a look again, although I know I have the treble blleed on the correct terminals.

J

BillDL · July 2023

Check to ensure that the bare wire "legs" of the capacitor are not touching any other pot lugs, the body of the pot, any other component, or screening foil/paint. It is good practice to slide heatshrink tubing onto bare metal legs of capacitors or resistors used in circuits. It's also very easy to end up with a bad solder connection when you have more than one wire soldered through the eyelet hole of lugs. It's usually easier removing the nut from a pot and lifting it out of the cavity onto something like a piece of cardboard to work on it than trying to solder down into the control cavity.

FelineGuitars · July 2023

Kind of sounds like you have dislodged the earth from the right hand tag somehow.

However I would suggest that you could have had an issue with the tone control bleeding off treble if the feed to the tone control was coming from the left hand tag on the volume pot

Swapping to 50s style connection would greatly reduce some of the bleeding away

https://sixstringsupplies.co.uk/pages/modern-vs-50s-les-paul-wiring?_pos=3&_psq=50&_ss=e&_v=1.0

ICBM · July 2023

If the control works normally down to 1 and then jumps back up to full at 0, the pot is damaged - the wiper must be making contact with the track down to 1 or the volume wouldn't go down, so the track can't be completely broken and the ground connection to the terminal must be present. If the wiper then lifts off the track as it reaches 0 - which is what allows the volume to jump up again, the signal is going via the resistor in the treble pass network - then the pot is physically distorted and will need to be replaced.

Dave_Mc · July 2023

Jonathangus said:

Dave_Mc said:

Maybe you dislodged the ground lug/wire of the volume pot? (Someone will be along presently to tell me that wouldn't do that!)

No, that's exactly what it'll do. If the third lug isn't grounded, there's nowhere to bleed the signal to, so turning the volume down will have no effect.

Thanks

I did that on a guitar once and the volume didn't turn off. However- as @ICBM rightly says, I've got a feeling (working on pretty hazy memory here) the volume knob just didn't really do anything much at all, rather than worked properly from 10 to 1 but then shot up to full at 0...

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Knackered my Vol pot?

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