Telecaster Tone Control Acting as a Volume Control

peteri

Hi

Tried an old (60's) Telecaster at the weekend, love it - but it has a small fault, the tone control works fine on the bridge pickup, completely fine.

With the tone control up full, the neck pickup sounds lovely - but turning down the tone, and it gradually cuts the volume to near 0.

Both pickups work fine apart from this, and the 'tone control as a volume knob' only affects the neck unit.

Any ideas? I'm thinking it's likely the switch which is shot - can't think what else it can be.

Ta

Alegree

The capacitor is probably touching a ground on the wrong side somewhere.

peteri

Thanks - but surely that would affect both pickups equally?

Gagaryn

peteri said:

Thanks - but surely that would affect both pickups equally?

Tone control is clearly sending the neck pickup signal to ground somehow - photos would help, are there two caps?

peteri

I'll take a photo tonight, there's just a treble bleed cap on the volume pot - plus the one for the tone control.

Switch is standard Tele switch, with output going to volume control

Agree - it's absolutely sending to ground, just can't understand why it's only the neck pickup (and it absolutely is only the neck pickup, I'm not dreaming it! )

Hence my switch theory, can't see how it can be the pickup - since it works fine with the tone control full up.

thanks again

Funkfingers

Much depends on which period Telecaster circuitry is in the guitar. 

The original lever switch selections would have been:
1) Bridge PU only (with tone control)
2) Neck PU only (with tone control)
3) Neck PU only through preset bass tone network. (Muffled!)

The original tone control capacitor value would have rolled away a good bit of the overall signal.

If the present control arrangement has been arrived at by modifying the original harness rather than rebuilding from scratch, there are several things that could have gone wrong.

ICBM

The neck pickup has a broken coil at the ground (inner) end. This is the standard symptom. The reason you get a fair amount of signal out of it - without the tone control turned down - is that it's coupled to ground by the capacitance of the coil to the cover.

Unfortunately you will usually need the coil rewinding, unless it's just a bad solder joint at the eyelet - try resoldering that first.

peteri

Ah - thanks (in a way!) @ICBM - that completely fits, I've just taken resistance readings at the eyelet of the neck pickup and I'm seeing 1Mohm

Of course 6kish at the bridge.

Fits! Time to raise an 'issue'!

Appreciate the help all