All right so I get my strat tonight and I am pretty darn upset.. All pots and the swtich are screwed up... And I don't like the way the pickups sound.. But that may be because of the other electronics and maybe the strings... Hard to tell... Plus there is considerable fret wear...

But what really irks me is the pickup height... here is a photo of the highest possible setting I could get for the 3 pickups...



I cannot get them to go higher.. And I cannot lower the bridge without the strings touching the fretboard.. And yes, I tried adjusting the truss rod.. ANd that does not help...

Does this look normal ?

Looks to me like the neck is shimmed pretty high.

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Chet Feathers

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I didn't Lose my mind, I traded it for this guitar.

Chet:

This is going to sound bizarre... but I took the neck off and screwed it back on and now the neck is in a lot better alignment/height with the bridge... Now the strings are much closer to the pickups...

But now still the guitar sound is void of any warmth... I mean a strat should be bright but this is ridiculous... The other strats I played last saturday sounded better IMHO...

I am thinking about getting a loaded pickguard with some vintage noiseless pups..

Try moving the pups farther away from the strings and then either use the tone controls on the guitar or play with your amp settings.

Personally I have found that I like my pups almost even with the pickguard, then I made amp setting adjustments.

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Chet Feathers

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I didn't Lose my mind, I traded it for this guitar.

Problem is the tone knobs don't work... I wish they did... It would give me a better idea of what the pups sound like..

And the switch is screwed up... some positions are a lot quieter than others...

Personally I would replace the pots and switch with a complete re-wire before I even thought about replacing pups.

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Chet Feathers

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I didn't Lose my mind, I traded it for this guitar.

2 and 4 should be quieter. Those are the humbucking positions.

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-Kirk

GUITARS
'12 Sonoran Acoustic - black (dated 10/31/12)
'13 Standard Strat
AMP
Vox ac4c1-bl
PEDALS
Compressor
Big Muff
Vox Stomplab 1G
Carbon Copy Delay

I am thinking more along those lines... I was able to get some good sounds out of the guitar... If I jiggled the switch I can get the eleltronics to work correctly for a few seconds...

I am pretty handy with a soldering iron.. So maybe StewMac has something or GuitarElectronics.com

You really need to be having a look inside the control cavity at the wiring mate.
What guitar is it? It looks like three singlecoils and a floyd(or equivalent) bridge.
There are various things you can do to the guitars wiring to warm the sounds up a bit. Chet's suggestion of changing the pots and switch is top drawer advice. However I suspect that they could have already been changed by the previous owner. Maybe theres a cold solder on the earth wires, causing the noise. If you can please take a picture of the wiring of the guitar. If you could downsize it too that would be great. I struggle to see the wood for the trees on big pictures.

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No no and no

What makes you think I didn't do this... Of course I did...



I already ordered a wiring harness... I will go ahead and install it... I think it'll all be good after this... I enjoy working in guitar electronics... So, I am looking forward to the challenge... But it won't be considering I am used to working on hollow and semi-hollow body guitar electronics.. Now that's a pain...

Spot on. The picture in the first post shows the weirdest setup I've seen for a while. Judging from that alone the previous owner was an enthusiastic "have-a-go-hero" who unfortunately knew how to adjust rocks with sledge hammers but not guitars with screw drivers.

Hard to imagine he stopped at that nutty bridge setting: for sure he's been inside and futzed with the LX too. And it sounds like the switch is simply TU, so that ain't helping.

BTW, I'm curious:

Didn't happen to notice a shim about the size of a phone directory fall out of the pocket when you had the neck off did you? Something has to account for that flying trapeze string height in the top picture...

Good luck with it - C

Ceri:

I should first preface by saying that i may know a hell of a lot about Les Pauls and semis/335's but this will be my first strat...

I am not sure what was going on with the neck.. But i have a feeling... I think this guitar has a screw adjustable shim device that you can access via a hole in the steel plate... When the person put the neck back on, and I dont' know how this happened, they didnt' align this screw with a recess in the neck.. so the neck was un-intentionally shimmed...

I don't know... It's all greek to me... But the important thing is that the neck setup is pretty close to perfect now..

I will say however that those electronics look untouched to me...
All solders look clean...

Cajunblues.

Well thanks for posting a pic of the wiring. Looking at it I do have one suggestion. The lone black earth wire going to the back of the solder pot, appears to have a layered solder joint. Also the volume pot lug soldered to the back of the volume pot looks a bit ropey. You may want to try and address them two issues. It may help.
Personaly I'd strip all the wires of and resolder them one at a time. Labourious I know but it will eliminate any soldering issue.
If your handy with a multimeter you could throw one round the circuit and test for continuity. I'm not and dont know where to start.

Whats that bridge a Kahler? It does look to be set wrong. Those pickups have AlNiCo magnets. It also appears that the center pickup is stock polarity, leading me to believe their some kind of vintage reproduction.

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No no and no

Ha - well that explains that, then. That will have lead to the strings crashing into the upper frets which is why he then set the bridge and pickups to that cherry-picker height. Folly upon folly. Sorted now: I presume you've wound the bridge back down to ground level?


Uh-hu? Then your problem is just a dead switch. Easy to remedy - and it sounds like you know how to go about that.

Good luck with it - and by all means come back and show us pix of the finished job when you're done. We love looking at that stuff!

Cheers - C

thanks for your advice.. But I am just going to replace the entire harness:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... K:MEWAX:IT

I think that would be in order... If you are referring to the bridge being raised high in the first photo... That was because the neck shim thingy.. After fixing that, I adjusted the bridge back to where it should be... Like I said, the guitar setup is good now..

This bridge is a System I Tremolo...