I have a 93 American Strat Plus with the gold lace sensors. Had this for many years. It now seems that I need to operate the volume at 10 to have any kind of volume or good tone. Playing a Drz MAZ 18 MKII. Could there be an issue with the guitar pickups or pots? Also looking at replacing them with a zexcoil loaded pick guard with the vintage and throaty buckers. Any thoughts?
Abnormally reduced volume except fully up is probably a dirty pot. I'd start with spraying it out with Deoxit (or some similar electrical contact cleaner), and see if that fixes the problem. If not, you may need to replace the volume pot. Nothing wrong with trying a new loaded guard, if that's what you want to do.
Thanks, I will try and spray it. Not to be dense but I assume I will need to remove the pickguard to do that?
You can just unscrew the pickguard and pull off the pot covers, lift up the pickguard and flip it over on the top of the guitar.
I don't....I just take off the knob carefully from the front by slowly prying up and turning over and over with a butter knife....if you pull too hard you could pull out the pot shaft..... Then I spray contact cleaner between the shaft and sleeve and turn it back and forth a few times and check if the volume has changed.....
Usually yes. Most pots have vent holes somewhere in the metal casing that you can get spray into. It's possible to do it with the strings just really loose, but it's kind of a pain to do it that way. Easiest if you're changing strings anyway, just remove the pg screws and flip the pickguard over.
