Is there something wrong with this wiring diagram or are the pots bad?

YellowLedBetterMan

Changing pickups in a HH Squier Bullet Mustang to the wiring diagram below. Also installing new 500k pots as the pots that came as stadard are 250k. All is working ok, apart from when we turn the volume down a bit, where it cuts out entirely. Then close to being turned all the way down, it springs back to life and begins tapering down to silent.

Its like 70% or so of the pot's rotation is silent.

So, thinking the pot might be shegged, I soldered in a new alpha a500k pot that came in the same package as the suspected faulty one. Lo and behold - same result.

Is it the diagram or is it just shit pots or is it just bad luck?

FelineGuitars

There is nothing wrong with the diagram 

Do you have a pic of the soldered up harness in case we can spot an error or fault

YellowLedBetterMan

Sure - https://imgur.com/a/Ma41Omd

its not the neatest soldering job but it's only the second time I've ever soldered anything

ICBM

That does sound like faulty pots. I can’t think of anything else external to the pot which would produce that sequence of on/off/normal.

The only possibility I can think of is that very rarely, if the knob is fitted too far onto the shaft, it can bind against the nut and force the mechanism inside out of position so it cuts out - but this is rare enough that I’d still be surprised both pots did it (usually it just jams the knob). You can check if it’s that by simply turning the pot with no knob on.

If that’s only the second time you’ve soldered anything, you’ve learned very fast!

YellowLedBetterMan

ICBM said:

That does sound like faulty pots. I can’t think of anything else external to the pot which would produce that sequence of on/off/normal.

The only possibility I can think of is that very rarely, if the knob is fitted too far onto the shaft, it can bind against the nut and force the mechanism inside out of position so it cuts out - but this is rare enough that I’d still be surprised both pots did it (usually it just jams the knob). You can check if it’s that by simply turning the pot with no knob on.

If that’s only the second time you’ve soldered anything, you’ve learned very fast!

Thank you for the complement. I struggled with the first few soldering points but after that, I seemed to get into a rhythm.

I doubt it would be anything like the knob - as you can see from the picture, the pot isnt even attached to the metal plate. Just frustrating how both pots seem to be the same.

YellowLedBetterMan

All fixed now - seems to have just been a bad batch of Alpha mini pots, the taper on the volume pot seemed to all be in the last 10% of rotation.

It's been replaced with the cheapest, smallest pots I've ever seen. A bit of WD-40 into them to remove the scratchiness and they're working great.