Mexican Tele - installing new pickups

MrT

Finally getting round to installing the mojo 52 pickups I picked up from here a while back. The neck pickup previously installed looks like it it's either soldered to a small screw plate screwed into the body or exposed and soldered here before carrying on to the back of the pot. 

When I install the new pickups what should I do? Solder it to that little screw plate? Ignore that little screw plate and just feed it through and solder it to the back of the pot? Twist it together with the wire already going to that screw plate then solder them both to the little plate? I'm guessing it's just earthing so any of those options may work. 

If it's best to go to the pot I may need to get a new soldering iron - my draper 25w iron doesn't seem to give out a huge amount of heat (or maybe it's just the tip I've got on it).

As usual - any advice much appreciated! 

MattBanshee

Soldering the ground to the screwplate should do the job just fine. I don't like soldering to the back of pots if I can avoid it, but if you must then sometimes it helps to scratch up the surface of the pot with a stanley knife beforehand, and hold the iron onto it for a good long time before you introduce the solder.

Winny_Pooh

If you have a multimeter does the plate/shielding connect to the pot?

MrT

Thanks for the help guys. 

I installed the pickup in the end using the black wire to the screwplate but got no sound out of it. I puzzled over it for a while but on closer inspection it looks like the coil wire that comes off the black wire and round the edge of the pickup has been damaged at some point (either in transit or while fitting them). I only see one tiny strand of coil wire wrapping over the edge here and  I'm getting no resistance reading at all over the pickup :-( 

I think the pickups got to go back for a rewind which obviously is far from ideal but looking on the positive I guess I've learnt something else! 

Winny_Pooh

Do you have a photo? If there is some wire to solder to you could still fix it.

MrT

Here's a couple of unclear photos but you can (maybe see) there's only a tiny bit of the coil on the black side edge:

https://imgur.com/gallery/Cvz9x

Winny_Pooh

Give it a quick burn with a lighter to remove the enamel and try and solder onto it.

ICBM

If it's the outer winding you can often fix it by unwinding one turn and refitting it to the eyelet, after cleaning the solder out of it. If its the inner end it's tricky, but you can join on a bit of other fine wire if you're careful.

I wouldn't burn it with a lighter, that will usually burn the wire away with this sort of fine gauge. The coating should be self-fluxing normally so you can solder straight to it.

MrT

Cheers for the advice guys but in this case I think I'm going to whimp out of any further meddling and just send it back to Marc at Mojo Pickups to sort out for me. 

I'll update the post once it's back and fitted properly.