Custom harness for 4004
Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2018 1:04 pm
I finally fixed the intermittent problem with the harness Dane made for one of my 4004 Laredos.
Here's the full story for those who have not heard it (I have not said much as I wanted to wait until after I had repaired the defective, as delivered, harness). Last Spring, I asked Dane to build me a simple harness, just a pickup selector switch and individual volume controls for the two pickups. I am fully capable of doing so myself but I felt like throwing Dane a bone given all the praise here about his custom harnesses that he offers for sale on TB. I swapped a part that I had up for sale to him in exchange for the harness, so no cost outside of shipping expenses for me.
I specified in an e-mail to Dane the switch I wanted to use, along with a Digikey link to the exact model/part number of the switch, a C&K On-On-On mini toggle switch with bat handle and solder lugs; we were going to use his famously superior, critically matched, CTS potentiometers that are, according to Dane, far superior to the pots that RIC uses, along with his cloth covered wiring and excellent solder skills.
When the harness arrived (well packed, thanks Dane!) the first thing I noted was the switch had PC board solder pins on it, not the solder lugs I specified. Okay, so this made things a bit trickier for Dane to solder the leads to. However, I also noted that he cut, clear down to the body of switch, two diagonally opposed pins, one on each end of the switch, that were not going to be used.
I installed the harness in one of my basses and plugged it in to test the installation and the sonic enhancement I was expecting from his description that his pots make everything brighter, clearer, etc. I did not really hear any difference in tonality or extra brightness compared to the stock RIC harness, the only difference being the ability to individually adjust the volume levels between the two pickups. A good thing, actually, as the bass has more than enough brightness to it already that any more would be potentially earbleedingly bright.
I played the bass for about an hour, going through various volume settings and switch positions; all good except for a bit of cutoff of the neck pickup when I started to roll down that volume control (that persists to this day, there is a small defect in the internal track of that pot, so much for these hand selected and tested potentiometers!). The next day I grabbed the bass to do some recording with it and when I switched the selector switch to the neck pickup no sound was produced from it. Hmm. I switched to the bridge pickup and all was good there. Hmm. When I set the switch to the middle (both pickups) position the sound intermittently changed from the, as expected full-on both pickups tone, and a drop off of the bottom end as the neck pickup kept cutting in and out on its own. Hmm. I rocked the selector switch back and forth and found that I can get the neck pickup to work occasionally if I wiggled the switch a bit. Hmm.
I have been using C&K mini switches for over 35 years on various projects of mine, this was the first time I have ever experienced any problems or failures of any kind with them, so the first thing to come to mind were those two pins on the back of the switch that Dane cut off. I removed the back cover to the control cavity of the bass and found that I could move the pins that the volume controls were soldered to (they should not be doing that), discovering that the whole internal workings of the switch was able to move around! Given that Dane modified the switch when he built this harness we will never know if the problem was a manufacturing defect or if the problem was caused by Dane's modification to the switch, unfortunately.
When I contacted Dane about this problem he said there was no way the problem was caused by his modding the switch; he said he cut those two solder pins off to make it easy for me to know which pins to solder to, which is odd as I was soldering the pickup leads to the volume pots, not the switch. There was no need for Dane to have messed with the switch's solder pins at all. Regardless, Dane offered to pay for a replacement switch. I ordered the correct switch from Digikey myself to ensure I got the correct part, then Dane reimbursed me for the cost of the part and the shipping of it to me from Digikey.
I left Dane's harness as is all this time until I figured out whether I wanted to redo the harness in a different configuration, or not, as I was considering turning the selector switch into a two position tone cap switch for two different amounts of tone roll-off. For now, I just put the new switch in as originally planned, as a pickup selector switch. The new, correct switch works great and I am thrilled with the bass, once again (I hardly played it after putting Dane's harness in due to the defective switch which sucked all the joy out of playing that bass).
I have only read about one or two others who have had problems with Dane's harnesses, IIRC both were related to pickup selector switches, the large 4003 type Switchcraft one. The neck pickup's volume pot that Dane installed in my harness still has the "hiccup" when first rolling down the volume control, that will never get any better unless that pot gets replaced. Eventually, I may just make a whole new harness myself using better quality components.
Okay, back to playing my bass!
Here's the full story for those who have not heard it (I have not said much as I wanted to wait until after I had repaired the defective, as delivered, harness). Last Spring, I asked Dane to build me a simple harness, just a pickup selector switch and individual volume controls for the two pickups. I am fully capable of doing so myself but I felt like throwing Dane a bone given all the praise here about his custom harnesses that he offers for sale on TB. I swapped a part that I had up for sale to him in exchange for the harness, so no cost outside of shipping expenses for me.
I specified in an e-mail to Dane the switch I wanted to use, along with a Digikey link to the exact model/part number of the switch, a C&K On-On-On mini toggle switch with bat handle and solder lugs; we were going to use his famously superior, critically matched, CTS potentiometers that are, according to Dane, far superior to the pots that RIC uses, along with his cloth covered wiring and excellent solder skills.
When the harness arrived (well packed, thanks Dane!) the first thing I noted was the switch had PC board solder pins on it, not the solder lugs I specified. Okay, so this made things a bit trickier for Dane to solder the leads to. However, I also noted that he cut, clear down to the body of switch, two diagonally opposed pins, one on each end of the switch, that were not going to be used.
I installed the harness in one of my basses and plugged it in to test the installation and the sonic enhancement I was expecting from his description that his pots make everything brighter, clearer, etc. I did not really hear any difference in tonality or extra brightness compared to the stock RIC harness, the only difference being the ability to individually adjust the volume levels between the two pickups. A good thing, actually, as the bass has more than enough brightness to it already that any more would be potentially earbleedingly bright.
I played the bass for about an hour, going through various volume settings and switch positions; all good except for a bit of cutoff of the neck pickup when I started to roll down that volume control (that persists to this day, there is a small defect in the internal track of that pot, so much for these hand selected and tested potentiometers!). The next day I grabbed the bass to do some recording with it and when I switched the selector switch to the neck pickup no sound was produced from it. Hmm. I switched to the bridge pickup and all was good there. Hmm. When I set the switch to the middle (both pickups) position the sound intermittently changed from the, as expected full-on both pickups tone, and a drop off of the bottom end as the neck pickup kept cutting in and out on its own. Hmm. I rocked the selector switch back and forth and found that I can get the neck pickup to work occasionally if I wiggled the switch a bit. Hmm.
I have been using C&K mini switches for over 35 years on various projects of mine, this was the first time I have ever experienced any problems or failures of any kind with them, so the first thing to come to mind were those two pins on the back of the switch that Dane cut off. I removed the back cover to the control cavity of the bass and found that I could move the pins that the volume controls were soldered to (they should not be doing that), discovering that the whole internal workings of the switch was able to move around! Given that Dane modified the switch when he built this harness we will never know if the problem was a manufacturing defect or if the problem was caused by Dane's modification to the switch, unfortunately.
When I contacted Dane about this problem he said there was no way the problem was caused by his modding the switch; he said he cut those two solder pins off to make it easy for me to know which pins to solder to, which is odd as I was soldering the pickup leads to the volume pots, not the switch. There was no need for Dane to have messed with the switch's solder pins at all. Regardless, Dane offered to pay for a replacement switch. I ordered the correct switch from Digikey myself to ensure I got the correct part, then Dane reimbursed me for the cost of the part and the shipping of it to me from Digikey.
I left Dane's harness as is all this time until I figured out whether I wanted to redo the harness in a different configuration, or not, as I was considering turning the selector switch into a two position tone cap switch for two different amounts of tone roll-off. For now, I just put the new switch in as originally planned, as a pickup selector switch. The new, correct switch works great and I am thrilled with the bass, once again (I hardly played it after putting Dane's harness in due to the defective switch which sucked all the joy out of playing that bass).
I have only read about one or two others who have had problems with Dane's harnesses, IIRC both were related to pickup selector switches, the large 4003 type Switchcraft one. The neck pickup's volume pot that Dane installed in my harness still has the "hiccup" when first rolling down the volume control, that will never get any better unless that pot gets replaced. Eventually, I may just make a whole new harness myself using better quality components.
Okay, back to playing my bass!