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Wilko johnson tabs2/21/2023 Then – with no way now for the heat to conduct up to the delicate coil wire – I can clean up the old solder connection to the cover tab. Using a pair of wire snips – I cut the jumper as close to the ground wire connection as possible. This gives a little more space to work in, and makes the whole process much easier. The pickup can then be completely removed from the body, by withdrawing the lead wires. Both pickup ground leads are detatched from their grounding point on the back of the volume pot, and the white “hot” wire from the neck pickup is unsoldered from the selector switch. The pickup is unsoldered at the control plate. Fender “Nocaster 51” neck pickup – Hardwired ground connection severed, and new ground lead attached I don’t want to risk trying to unsolder the connection – especially at the coil connection – but it does look like I’ll easily be able to snip the jumper wire, and then clean up the pickup tab afterwards. In the picture above, you can see the hardwired connection between the ground connection of the pickup coil, and one of the metal tabs which hold the pickup cover on. With the scratchplate off – I can unmount the neck pickup, and have a look at the wiring underneath. Fender “Nocaster 51” neck pickup – note hardwired ground connection for the pickup cover A cloth helps to protect the body underneath. With the strings detuned and removed from the tuner posts, I can take off the scratchplate, and lift the control plate out onto the body. By taping them just above the neck pickup, and just below the nut – the strings remain in relative position to each other, and are much less likely to tangle. I can theoretically reverse the signal path on either pickup, but if I try and resolve the issues at the neck – then it’s less likely I’ll have to scrap the strings. Anyway – since I’ve got the Tele out of it’s case for a while – I’ll see if I can quickly resolve my little problem now… Taping the temporarily removed strings to stop them tangling (Plus the fact that this Tele gets most of it’s use with the selector set in the bridge position). I think, other builds definitely got in the way too. I know also, at the time, I didn’t particulary want to scrap a new set of strings either. I know, sometimes, that when I finish a build – the last thing I want to do is to take it all apart again, just to fix some annoying little bug. I’m not sure why I’ve left this so long to fix. Crucially – severing the ground hardwire jumper, means that the extra metal plate isn’t brought into the “hot” side of the circuit when the wires are reversed. This will switch the original “hot” and “ground” signal routes – effectively reversing the direction the induced current travels in. One of these connections has to be severed, and a new ground connection created for one of the pickups. These are both directly hardwired to the pickup ground wires on each pickup body, via short jumper wires. There’s just one complication, in this case.Īnd that’s because both pickups have extraneous metal components, (a heavy baseplate on the bridge pickup, and the lipstick cover on the neck pickup). This effectively reverses the signal from one pickup, and can put the signals from the two pickups properly into phase. This involves the switching over of the hot and ground leads, from one of the pickups, at the connection to the switch. However – if you do identify, (or suspect), a partially cancelled signal in the blended position – there’s usually a potentially easy fix. Even the advice that a particular pickup is “reverse wound”, or “reverse polarity” means nothing unless you know what it’s the opposite of. It’s difficult to tell what polarity pickups have, just by looking at them, and without a special tester. However – a problem sometimes arises when pickups from different manufacturers, or from different sets, are mixed. The set may be wound so that the pole orientations or coil directions of the different pickups are still compatible when combined – working together to cancel out any interference in the signal. Sometimes, Telecaster pickups are paired so that when they’re combined in the middle position – they have a “hum-cancelling” effect. Turns out the bridge and neck pickups I’ve chosen aren’t immediately compatible – and the signals are out of phase. I immediately identified the problem as likely to be down to either the polarisation of one of the pickups, or the winding of the pickups, (or maybe both). Low in volume and “tinny” – with a “nasal” sort of sound. The neck and bridge pickups were fine on their own, but the blended, middle position was weak. I wired this Wilko Johnson Telecaster up a while ago, and at the time I noticed a problem with the middle pickup position.
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