I haven't played my electric much since I bought the acoustic, but when I picked it up today I noticed it sounded a bit quiet. Yes, it was plugged in. :P After fiddling with the amp controls and whatnot, I discovered that the volume control on the guitar itself only seems to work at about the last (highest volume side) quarter-turn or so, and it doesn't reach the volume that it used to, even with the amp turned up to 11.
As I've noted before, I'm an electrician by trade...but I've never messed around with guitar guts before. Mine is a Yamaha Pacifica (012, I believe) with an S-S-H configuration, one volume and one tone knob, and the ever-present 5 way switch.
I guess my big question is, where does one look for replacement parts like this? I realize I'll have to tear it down anyway to see what the value of the pot is, but after that, I'm assuming I don't just want to hit Radio Shack and see if they have something that fits.
Any bright ideas for a dim fella? :)
ur assuming that the knob just isnt catching onto the control anymore to turn it enough?
if that is the case, the company probably sells them seperatly i presume.
There is often a resistor (anywhere between 250k and 1meg - humbuckers come down lower to around 25 or 50 Ohm, I believe).
Get that value and that of the pot and replace both - you would have to look to see if the pot is log or linear.
Whilst you're at it you could consider an upgrade to the tone control. Buy a TBX control (costs around $12). Instead of having a tone control that, usually, just removes bass from the signal, the TBX consists of two pots in one. Zero is in the "5" position - turning one way removes treble and turning the other removes bass. The result is a much clearer tone control.
There is often a resistor (anywhere between 250k and 1meg - humbuckers come down lower to around 25 or 50 Ohm, I believe).
Get that value and that of the pot and replace both - you would have to look to see if the pot is log or linear.
Whilst you're at it you could consider an upgrade to the tone control. Buy a TBX control (costs around $12). Instead of having a tone control that, usually, just removes bass from the signal, the TBX consists of two pots in one. Zero is in the "5" position - turning one way removes treble and turning the other removes bass. The result is a much clearer tone control.
Actually the tone control removes the treble not the bass when you turn it down. Tone control will tend to use a linear pot, while the volume should be log.. Though you can use a linear pot with a resistor in parallel which actually gives a better log taper, but a log pot is near enough anyway. Normally if you do this the pot and resistor are of the same value making the total resistance half the value your using.
"And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on earth." - Eric Idle, The Galaxy Song.
I've also heard log pots called audio taper, so something labeled with either of those names will work for a volume control.
You can fine tune the sound by changing the pot values regardless of what pot value the guitar originally had. Using higher value pots (500K) will give the guitar a brighter sound and lower value pots (250K) will give the guitar a slightly warmer sound. Most guitars use between .01 and .1MFD (Microfarad) tone capacitors with .02 (or .022) and .05 (or .047) being the most common choices. The capacitor and tone pot are wired together to provide a variable low pass filter.
This means tone control is turned only the low frequencies pass to the output jack and the high frequencies are grounded out. The capacitor value determines the "cutoff frequency" of the filter and the position of the tone control determines how much the highs above the cutoff frequency will be reduced. with humbuckers typically use .02MFD (or .022MFD) capacitors to cut off less of the highs and guitars with single coils typically use .05MFD capacitors to allow more treble to be rolled off.
Some guitars have a small value "treble bleed" capacitor (typically .001MFD) across two terminals of the volume control. The purpose of the treble bleed capacitor is to "slow down" the reduction of the higher frequencies by allowing some of the highs to bypass or "bleed" past the volume pot for the for the first . The result is an consistent, bright tone at all volume settings.
Use an Audio taper potentiometer.
Joe
OK...stopped by Guitar Center on the way home and bought a replacement pot. Simple 3-terminal 500k job, exactly what I needed.
No sweat installing it, same simple soldering I've been doing for years. Problem is that it didn't fix the problem.
Eh?
It runs full travel, but I still only have actual volume control between roughly the 7 and 10 positions of the knob.
My next thought was that perhaps the amp had gone stupid for some reason, but plugging the guitar through the computer produces the same result.
Any ideas? Oh, and thanks for the tips on the tone control, even though that's not what's wrong. :D
Does it act the same way on all the switch combinations and different pickup combinations? Some thoughts would be the switch needs to be cleaned or replaced, a bad wire, bad solder joint, the pickup itself. do a little troubleshooting and see if you can narrow it down to certain settings on the switch, tone control, maybe check the wires.
Joe
Just wanted to drop in real fast and post the update/ending to this fiasco...
Basically, I ended up almost completely tearing the guts out, resoldered every connection, and replaced both the volume and the tone pots. When I eventually got it put back together it worked fine, so it must indeed have been the tone control that was somehow shorting the rest of the circuit. That'll teach me to scoff at seemingly unrelated suggestions - my apologies. :)
Of course, Murphy himself being the supervisor of this whole evolution, I accomplished all of this *after* I got fed up and just bought a new guitar. Is it bad that I'm on my 3rd electric in less than 6 months? :lol:
The Yamaha is now quite happily sitting at my aspiring-guitarist friend's house, and it'll probably end up staying there indefinitely. The new axe, while still inexpensive (It's an Ibanez GAX70TR) actually fits me much better, and I like the tone a lot more than I did on the Yamaha. It just sounds more like what I imagine "me" sounding like. :)
Great to hear things worked out for you. Enjoy your new Guitar.
joe
