Hey guys/girls,

Bought a set of these pickups for my strat and had them installed by a guitar tech at the place of purchase (of the guitar, not where I got the pickups; they were bought at different stores). 2 out of the 3 sound great, the neck pickup was DOA which as i'm told is the case if any of the pickups in the set are bad is almost always the neck.

Anyways, my question is this: is it normal that the tone pots kill the volume when you turn it down low (past 2 or 3)? It wasn't like that when I had the standard pickups in there before the upgrade. It would just tone down the treble (prior to the upgrade) and there would still be sound when I had it on 1 (tone control). Granted I know that there is a difference in the quality of the components used, but would it really make that drastic of a difference?

I have read a couple of articles and reviews that say to use the wiring diagram from the american deluxe stratocaster. But as far as I can work out, they look the same. Is it the fact that the american deluxe diagram shows the 1 meg pots and that is what I should be using (as opposed to what came in the pickup kit)?

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Joe
2011 Standard Stratocaster
* SCN Noiseless Pickups

Did you also change out your volume and tone pots? IIRC the Vintage Noiseless pickups require values of 1meg.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

It's happend to me before; but different pickups; Dimarzio Virtual Vintage, and it was a cap change, not the pickups themselves. Not a big deal. You should use 500K for those though, the Dimarzio Area 58/61/67's and Pro 54 were made to be used with 250k. The Vintage Noiseless from Fender used to come with 1Meg pots, but I believe they changed to 500K, most people found the 1Meg to be just too much treble. One of mine cuts the neck pickup volume off when i roll the tone to 1, and each of my tone pots have their own dedicated cap, instead of both piggybacking off of one. They have different value for the caps as well.

I used the pots that came in the box with the pickups. I believe they are 1 meg for the volume and 500k for the tone control (I could always be wrong).

I called fender today (very helpful folks there) and the guy I spoke to said that the wiring diagram wasn't the clearest that he's ever seen and suggested that I look at the one for the american deluxe (omitting the caps that are on the volume pot as they are not really needed for my pickups) for a clear/concise wiring diagram. I printed it out and from what I can see comparing the two side by side, the american deluxe diagram is far better.

I think that once I get my new neck pickup, i'll just install it myself and double check the wiring. The customer service rep had said about my tone issue that the tech he spoke with thinks one of the pots is wired wrong or is bleeding the treble off to a ground or that the cap is wired incorrectly. Since i'm a bit paranoid that I don't want to damage it any further, I won't plug it in until I go to install the new pickup and look at the wiring. I'd hate to damage a $130 set of pickups.

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Joe
2011 Standard Stratocaster
* SCN Noiseless Pickups

I used to use Seymour Duncan, or Dimarzio wiring diagrams. I always found them to be the easiest to follow, regardless of what brand pickps you're using. Usually the higher valued pot goes to the tone controls.

We are talking milliamps of generated current - not sure how mis-wiring something would damage a PUP.

Open up the pick guard, plug it in, and see what the guy did wrong! Not sure why on a new set of PUPs ANY would be bad.

If the PUP isn't working, a wire/coil is broken or it is being grounded on both leads (or neither).

Or pick up a cheap multi-reader. Set it to measure ohms, then test the neck pickup. If its giving you a readout that's right (not .50 ohms or anything like that, should be 5+ohms), then the guy wired it wrong. He may have not wired it to the switch first. Stacked humbuckers can be wired wrong, and only put out the output of the pickup in parallel, which will give you a much lower reading, instead of series. It's an easy mistake to make if you're not paying attention to what wires you're working with.

I had the same thing happen. When the tone was all the way down = no sound. My cap was wired wrong.

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My ability to spell is in direct proportion to the amount of coffee I've had.