Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I installed a humbucking pickup in the treble position in my 79 4001 over the last couple of days and wanted to try one of the humbucker wiring mods. I started with this

and finished with
I left the bass wiring pretty much alone, except where I broke off one of the wire going to the jack as I was moving stuff around. I replaced the volume pot with a 500K pot and the treble pot with a 330K (measured closer to 500K) push pull like the type RIC uses now and put one of the new capacitors in the line. I wired everything up similar to the way it was prior except for the humbucker. I ran the red wire to one lug and ran a jumper (green) from that lug to the part of the pickup switch that also has the cap (like the output of the pickup prior). The clear and black lines were run to the other lug and the blue and the ground (I slipped a white tube over the exposed part to ensure it didn't touch anything it wasn't supposed to) to the case of the volume pot.

Now I have no sound and when I roll the volumes to 0, everything goes to ground. I have no idea why. I thought I wired everything correctly, but obviously not. Does anyone have any troubleshooting ideas or see anything obviously wrong with how it was wired?

Thanks!

I did some more troubleshooting and found a couple of things. First, I determind that my pickup lead from my toaster pickup had broken off. These aren't meant to move as much as I was moving the pickup so it snapped. I fixed that (melting the plastic plate that holds it in place while did it...but...it still measured the correct resistance). Then I measured the output of the bass pickup at the stereo jack and it looked similar to what I saw when I compared it to my 4003. When plugged in, it gave me no sound (this is after I disconnected the treble pickup). Through the mono pickup, everything was going to ground.

I did some more looking and found a glob of solder that had dripped from the volume pot case to the middle lug. I had checked it with a multimeter earlier and couldn't figure out why everything seemed to be grounded. Now I know. I disconnected the treble pickup to the output jack and plugged it into an amp. I got some metal on pickup noise from the bass pickup, so it looks like that problem is solved. I'm hoping that this solder glob was my problem the whole time.

I've burned myself twice in the last five minutes of work, so I'm going to let this sit for the night and get back to it hopefully tomorrow afternoon.