Anyone bought a Strat loaded pickguard from Northwest guitars? Confused...

JonnyBgoode

So I've just tried to fit my Tonerider loaded pickguard - their listing says: 'Simply drop the whole scratchplate in, hook up the ground wire to the tremolo claw and you're done. No mess and no fuss!'

(Hmm.. what about the jack socket I thought when I read that..)

Well it has arrived with a jack socket soldered on, so I'll have to desolder it in order to feed the jack wires through the hole in the body cavity through to the jack socket cavity, then resolder the jack back on. Secondly, it doesn't appear to have a ground wire. Huh?

I'm not super experienced at this, still learning and only swapped a few pickguards so far, but am I missing some things here?

Funkfingers

Please upload a photograph of the underside of the NWG/Tonerider pickguard assembly.

The vibrato "claw" grounding wire is normally a run of insulated single conductor, soldered to the chassis of the volume pot.

It is possible that the wire was accidentally omitted during assembly or broken off in transit. In the latter case, there would be a stub end of the cable still soldered to the pot.

JonnyBgoode

Funkfingers said:

Please upload a photograph of the underside of the NWG/Tonerider pickguard assembly.

Yeah usually I've no problem identifying the grounding wire, it's just not there. And how am I supposed to thread a wired jack socket through the tiny hole?  

Ok here we go:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fFT68kc3uR0m6zzheyVdiG-o5qpuiDq1/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TKjiXGOgOVgFNb1O0zeYVWgFl-XPW6hu/view?usp=sharing

Funkfingers

You are right. The wire was never attached. This might be just as well. You could probably make a tidier job of the soldering yourself.

jca74

Well that's not quite such as simple installation as they suggest. It looks like the trem claw ground is missing - you just need to run a single conductory cable from the back of the volume pot to the claw as funkfingers suggests.

If you already have a suitable wire soldered to your trem claw I would try to reuse this since the heat required to make this connection needs a more powerful solldering iron than the average 'light electronics usage' iron.

You will also need to desolder the jack socket and resolder it once the cable is fed through the body. I have no idea why they would ship it with this soldered on, since there is no option but to remove it to get the wire run between the different cavities.

JonnyBgoode

Funkfingers said:

You are right. The wire was never attached. This might be just as well. You could probably make a tidier job of the soldering yourself.

That's exactly what I thought, and I am sh1t at soldering. Thanks.

CasperCaster

W.r.t. the jack socket I can't think of a way to avoid soldering, unless.you use a choc-blok connector or similar (not very professional). 

However, if you want to avoid soldering an earth to the volume pot (can be tricky without a decently sized soldering iron) then I'd be tempted to run an extra earth wire from the jack socket back to the trem claw. It's technically less ideal than from the volume pot, but will work fine and you'll probably never notice the difference, and better than screwing up the volume pot with poor soldering technique or a too small iron.

JonnyBgoode

jca74 said:

Well that's not quite such as simple installation as they suggest. It looks like the trem claw ground is missing - you just need to run a single conductory cable from the back of the volume pot to the claw as funkfingers suggests.

If you already have a suitable wire soldered to your trem claw I would try to reuse this since the heat required to make this connection needs a more powerful solldering iron than the average 'light electronics usage' iron.

You will also need to desolder the jack socket and resolder it once the cable is fed through the body. I have no idea why they would ship it with this soldered on, since there is no option but to remove it to get the wire run between the different cavities.

Thanks for confirming that, all as I suspected. Bizarre really.

I don't have a spare ground cable with the little washer, unless I take it off another loaded pickguard but this is turning into a bit of a faff. I could easily get a refund as goods are not as described, but then I've got the hassle of queuing in our local busy post office to post it back.

Will see what they say Monday when they are back in the office. 

Funkfingers

Shipping with the jack socket soldered into circuit ensures:
1) that it arrives with the rest of the kit.
2) that the purchaser can see which conductor wires goes to which terminal.

The missing claw ground wire could be rattling around in the delivery packaging. Equally likely, the assembly could have been a Friday afternoon special. 

• 

My next move would be to e-mail NWG, explaining that the claw grounding wire was omitted and including the photographs as evidence. Hopefully, the shop will either send additional wire or offer a partial refund.

JonnyBgoode

Funkfingers said:

The missing claw ground wire could be rattling around in the delivery packaging. Equally likely, the assembly could have been a Friday afternoon special. 

My next move would be to e-mail NWG, explaining that the claw grounding wire was omitted and including the photographs as evidence. Hopefully, the shop will either send additional wire or offer a partial refund.

Yep will do ta. There was no loose cable in the packaging.

Just one more thing that I don't get - the Strats that I have worked on thus far have all had, in addition to the ground wire that goes to the trem claw, another shorter earth with a little washer that is screwed down inside the body cavity, grounding it to the paint. This NWG  loaded pickguard again has no sign of the latter. Is this screwed down earth cable an optional thing with Strats, does it generally improve (less noise/buzz) things,  is it only required with certain electrics or what?

Flip

 JonnyBgoode said:

Just one more thing that I don't get - the Strats that I have worked on thus far have all had, in addition to the ground wire that goes to the trem claw, another shorter earth with a little washer that is screwed down inside the body cavity, grounding it to the paint. This NWG  loaded pickguard again has no sign of the latter. Is this screwed down earth cable an optional thing with Strats, does it generally improve (less noise/buzz) things,  is it only required with certain electrics or what?

I'm no expert but surely this only applies if the paint is conductive?

I agree that the soldering looks pretty rough but frankly, that's true of many guitar electrics. Learning to solder is as important as learning all the other skills in guitar-making.

Finally, I would have thought even a modest soldering iron should be able to soften the solder between the 'uunused' pot tag and the casing. 

Funkfingers

The soldering eyelet washer in the grounding path is a feature of post-1982 American instruments with modern features such as conductive paint in the routed cavities.

If the NWG assembly is pretending to be vintage, there should be no soldering eyelet washer. Pre-CBS spec Stratocasters had an aluminium screening plate beneath the pickguard. This was grounded via the pot chassis.

JonnyBgoode

Funkfingers said:

The soldering eyelet washer in the grounding path is a feature of post-1982 American instruments with modern features such as conductive paint in the routed cavities.

If the NWG assembly is pretending to be vintage, there should be no soldering eyelet washer. Pre-CBS spec Stratocasters had an aluminium screening plate beneath the pickguard. This was grounded via the pot chassis.

Ok thanks, so its a modernish feature, but does that mean I should be adding  a cable/washer to the NWG assembly (the guitar's stock pickguard assembly had one)?  Or is this a suck it and see job where you add one if you get lots of buzz?

Funkfingers

If the stock wiring has the washer/screw, I would re-use that.

The single most helpful thing you can do to reduce hum and RF interference is twist the conductors of each pickup together. (It looks as if somebody already made a start on your neck position pickup.)

JonnyBgoode

I don't believe this... Bear in mind I am not good at soldering/desoldering..

So after  removing the tremolo claw earth ground and internal earth cable from my existing pickguard assembly then soldering them to the pickguard from North West Guitars, desoldering their jack socket etc only to find their pickguard won't drop in to my Strat because they've fitted the capacitor too far over!  ****ing numpties.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14kDZlc9averwU8JM6cCFejAxlZYnCn1J/view?usp=sharing

mart

Can't you just bend the cap over so it will fit?

Teyeplayer

JonnyBgoode said:

I don't believe this... Bear in mind I am not good at soldering/desoldering..

So after  removing the tremolo claw earth ground and internal earth cable from my existing pickguard assembly then soldering them to the pickguard from North West Guitars, desoldering their jack socket etc only to find their pickguard won't drop in to my Strat because they've fitted the capacitor too far over!  ****ing numpties.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14kDZlc9averwU8JM6cCFejAxlZYnCn1J/view?usp=sharing

You should easily (but cautiously) be able to push that forward so it fits in the relevant space -just be careful not to break the legs in the process. 

JonnyBgoode

That's exactly what I'm worried about doing ,- snapping the legs and voiding any refund.

sixstringsupplies

Very, very few places that offer prewired kits/harness/pickguards will include the ground wire. I can only think of one company off the top of my head that does. We don’t either. 

The idea being, most of these types of products are sold as replacements or drop ins to an existing guitar - generally, your guitar should already have a ground wire in it, connected to the claw. And if it doesn't, that certainly is not NWG fault.

re the jack socket - yeah that has always bugged me. We provide ours with the jack itself prewired, but not connected to the circuit. Why leave the jack connected only for the customer to have to de-solder, then to solder again. 

Some will have the wires already soldered to the circuit, so you just have to solder them to the jack.

Unfortunately, with prewired kits, you will always have to do some sort of soldering to install them, unless they are fully solderless.

But you’d never find a prewired Les Paul harness with the ground wire attached. Same logic applies to Fender style models (for us anyway)

re the capacitor issue - that is poorly placed but as others have mentioned you should easily be able to bend it inwards. 

SteveRobinson

sixstringsupplies said:

the general consensus is your guitar should already have a ground wire in it, connected to the claw. 

Also without a hefty iron it's quite hard to solder to the claw.

JonnyBgoode

Well I managed to bend the capacitor round (no sign of it having moved in transit, those legs were dead straight with no kinks).

Oh and check out how high above the pickguard their control knobs sit:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1taSr6pQSSP0FKVlVS16t9nJkwQSmcj-d/view?usp=sharing

Ridiculous, should be flush with the pickguard. To rectify this I will have to  buy some washers, remove the assembly and fit them underneath the pickguard on each pot so the shaft doesn't stick out as much.

'No mess and no fuss'