Tone pots have no effect

[teptwizz02]

Hello everyone. So I just installed my wiring harness in my 4001, and for some reason my tone pots are having no effect. I know all my soldering joints are good, so I'm kinda at a loss. I was thinking that maybe when I'm pushing and affixing my pickguard the caps' leads are somehow touching the back of the pot, but I put shrink tubing on them so I'm not sure how that would happen. Could this originate from the pickups by chance? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

[aceonbass]

Please post a couple good pics, and I'll see if I can help. I only use heat shrink tubing on the switch ground and two of the terminals on the mono switching jack. If you're using it on the cap leads, the heat generated by a heat gun or other source could be destroying your tone caps.

[teptwizz02]

Thanks for responding, dean. It’s not the greatest wiring job, but I believe everything’s where it should be and my soldering connections are good enough. I didn’t actually apply any heat to the tubing, but since they’re loose, it’s possible they slid down when I pushed the pick guard down. By the way, th pickups are humbuckers, the pots are 550k and the caps .022. Thanks again.

[teptwizz02]

Update: it seems the cap touching the pot was the issue.... at least I think so. I readjusted the tubing, repositioned the caps and put the pick guard down a bit more carefully. The tone works now.

[cassius987]

Update: it seems the cap touching the pot was the issue.... at least I think so. I readjusted the tubing, repositioned the caps and put the pick guard down a bit more carefully. The tone works now.

Sounds like maybe you were bypassing the tone cap and sending all your highs to ground by accidentally touching a lead wire of the cap to something grounded. (Easy to do with all the copper foil.) You should have gotten a brighter "100%" tone if that's the case.

[teptwizz02]

Yeah... that’s what was it then. It was all bright and wouldn’t roll off when turning the knob to zero... thus no effect. Happy it was resolved. I’ve got humbuckers in there and this is the first time I have it set up with 500k pots all around and .022 caps. Finally have that zing I’ve been looking for with no noise.

[teptwizz02]

A piggyback question here.... Although I have humbuckers installed, I'm still getting some noise. The noise doesn't change when I touch the strings, so I don't think it's a bridge ground issue. The noise changes with my position in the room. It's not the cable as I tried an active that produced zero noise. I'm thinking it may be that I just didn't do an adequate job shielding, but I'm not exactly sure about that. If the issue is related to my wiring, can anyone tell if I've noticeably done something wrong from the pictures I have posted above? Thanks.