Tone pots without function. HELP!

[angelmaniac]

As I put my 4th strat together I finally run into a problem. I soldered up the electrics with a 0.022 MFD Orange Drop capacitor and CTS pots. Volume pot work fine but the tone pots for neck and middle pickup take no effect when rolling down.
Could the capacitor been broken or is there a "cold" soldering point?

[thaus]

I would first resolder everything. Cold solder joints will do that and everything looks ok but isn't; also, go over all the connections and make sure you haven't left anything out.

On a side note, ich war gerade in Peine. Meine frau kommt aus Luneburg und die gegend; ich war in Bochum geboren.........

[stratagem]

You may have also inadvertently bypassed the tone pot by attaching the cap to the wrong solder points. The signal has to go through the cap and not around it.

I did this the first cap i swapped out.

[angelmaniac]

I looked up today and found out that i accidently soldered the wires from the tone pots to the wrong positions on the switch. Just have to swap it and everything was fine.

Now i noticed with this connections that the volume pot is very sensitive. I can only dial in the range from 7 to 10. Below 7 the sound gets too muddy. Is this normal?

@ thaus
Next time you are in Peine give me a message that we can meet each other!
Sound funny where you've been born and the german wife.

[tonyw]

is the value of your pots 250k or 500k? also sometimes people cook the pot with too much heat. The cap value is ok for brightness, my preference is .047 a little darker but it aint no biggy. The higher value of cap the more low frequencies at 0 on your tone control.

[anfontan]

Originally Posted by tonyw

is the value of your pots 250k or 500k? also sometimes people cook the pot with too much heat. The cap value is ok for brightness, my preference is .047 a little darker but it aint no biggy. The higher value of cap the more low frequencies at 0 on your tone control.

I was going to give the same advice about overheating but you beat me to it, Tony. I was doing mods on one my Teles and cooked a push/pull tone pot-same situation, there was no change in the tone.....
I like the .047 for Strats & Teles usually a 503 Poly is my favorite-a lot more durable than a ceramic.
--tonyf

[angelmaniac]

I used a matched set of CTS 250K pots from my friendly dealer. He also marked me which pot to put where. He measured a value of 246 for volume and the others around 230. Because i use Texas Specials he looked up for. As cap he gave me the Orange Drop .022. So i thought everything should be fine.