Help! Volume loss

PaulRR

I bought my daughter a Jackson Minion a while back, and it is suffering from very low volume output. She didn't realise this was abnormal and I thought it would be an easy fix once I found out about it. It's out of warranty now. So....

It's a twin humbucker guitar with single volume, single tone and a three-way blade selector.

I replaced the volume pot (an Alpha 500k audio taper), but it didn't sort the problem. So then I swapped out the bridge pickup for one I knew worked in other guitars. Still no go. So then I removed the tone pot from the circuit. After all of this the guitar through an amp still sounds as though the volume pot is wound right down to 2, and this is with it full up. Short of the blade selector and the output jack there isn't much more to change! I'm stumped - does anyone out there with more experience than me in these matters have any advice?  It would be much appreciated.

At least I'm getting to practice my soldering I guess!!

Thank you all.

Paul.

ICBM

First check carefully that nothing on any of the wiring is touching any shielding paint in the body cavities.

Although rare, there's also a small chance that the jack is internally partly shorted, which I've seen on a few far-east-made ones.

If it's possible to assemble the guitar with the electrics hanging out, first test it with the bridge pickup connected to the jack and nothing else at all - that should work, if not you know the jack is the problem. If it does, now connect it and the neck pickup via the selector switch, and see if that works. If again so, connect it via the volume control. If all that works, put the whole lot back into the guitar. If it now goes quiet you'll know it's shorting against something.

If you need to replace the jack, use only a USA Switchcraft, all other open-frame jacks are crap.

PaulRR

Fantastic. Thank you ICBM - I’ll give all that a go. Much appreciated!!

jaymenon

Exactly what ICBM said - so clearly and eloquently.

Funkfingers

PaulRR said:

three-way blade selector.

Almost certainly a cheap, eight-contacts-in-line, PCB type and, hence, potentially troublesome - even from brand new.

ICBM's direct to jack test suggestion should confirm that both pickups are working. By elimination, the selector switch is the cause of the signal loss.

Once you are committed to replacing the original selector switch, you gain the option to extract additional sounds from the guitar. 

If the stock pickups have output cables with more than *hot* and ground conductors, it becomes possible to do clever things with coil splitting and series/parallel coil interconnection - all governed from a five-way Superswitch.

PaulRR

A very balated response, but having replaced pretty much all of the electric parts in the guitar, in the end it proved to be the jack that was causing the problem. ICBM - you were completely right! Thank you for your advice everyone - this forum is an amazing resource.