4001 wiring

[speigel]

Hello everyone, I bought a 78' 4001 recently and I have a question about the volume controls. The bass pickup seems to work perfectly, but the treble pickup can only be heard if the bass volume is also turned up. So if I have the switch in the treble position, you can only here that pickup if the bass volume is also turned up. Is this normal or has someone wired it up wrong? If I have the switch on the bass position, the bass pickup works fine. Hope this makes sense.

[superheavydeathmetal]

This certainly isn't normal. The pickup controls should work completely independent of each other.

Do the tone pots work as expected?

It sounds like someone wired the bridge pickup to the neck pickup volume pot. Maybe this is because the volume pot for the bridge pickup went bad. But, this is a lousy fix because now the pickpups can't be balanced.

Does the neck pickup volume pot change the volume of the bridge pickup regardless of what position the bridge pickup volume pot is in? If either volume pot changes the volume of the bridge pickup when the other pot is all the way down, then there may be a short in the wiring.

Here is what the wiring should look like:
http://www.rickenbacker.com/pdfs/19507.pdf

Also, welcome back to the forum!

[speigel]

HI Conley, thanks for the reply.
The tones seem to be working ok.
I'm not very good at following schematics, I've looked at many pics online, but none of them seem to be any different to mine. Although its hard to tell.
With both pickups on, the volume on the treble pickup works ok.
The only thing I forgot to mention is that I replaced the cap on the volume, but I'm pretty sure its the right spec and I soldered it correctly. Could there possibly be a mistake there that would cause my problem.

[Gilmourisgod]

Open her up and post a photo of the guts as-is. If something is wired wrong, somebody will spot it PDQ.

[speigel]

Pic as attachment, I hope.

[Wiker]

Normally the wire from the pickup is soldered to the middle lug on the volume pot, and output is taken from one of the side lugs (while the other side lug goes to ground). When the volume is turned down the signal on the middle lug will gradually be sent more to ground (on one side lug) than to output (on the other side lug).

The problem with your wiring is that on the neck pickup volume pot, signal from the pickup is soldered to a side lug, while output is taken from the middle lug. What happens is that the output signal, which also includes the signal from the bridge pickup, is sent to ground instead of the signal from the neck pickup, when the bass volume is turned down.

Just unsolder and swap around those two cables.

[speigel]

Thanks Wiker.
I'll give that a go tomorrow evening.
Lets hope thats the only problem I find.

[speigel]

Thanks Wiker
That worked perfectly