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Replaced pickups, they tested fine, but neck AND middle position aren't working :<

zachalexander
June 30th, 2012, 04:33 PM
So I replaced the stock pickups in the Tele I've had since I was a kid, with Area T stacked humbuckers, which I heard about here.

I think I did everything very carefully, and before stringing back up, I tested both pickups with the handle of my pliers, and confirmed I was getting sounds out of the amp as expected. I guess it's conceivable that I totally spaced out and forgot to test the neck pickup, but I'm pretty sure I tested it.

Anyway, by the time I got it back up to my room, screwed everything down, and put on new strings, the neck and middle position weren't working. The bridge works, and sounds great, but I get nothing from the other two positions.

What makes it really strange to me is that the bridge pickup works by itself, but not in middle position.

Here are some pictures -- I can't see anything that looks wrong to me, but I hope some of you folks have some good ideas. The only changes I made were replacing the yellow leads from the stock pickups with the red leads from the new ones, and switching out the ground wires as well.

The neck pickup, by the way, had both gray and green ground wires, which are both included in the main ground on the back of the volume control.

Thoughts?

I don't have a multimeter, but I'm heading out to Radio Shack right now to go get one so I can figure out what's going on.

I hope the pickup itself isn't broken....

cjstcustom
June 30th, 2012, 08:05 PM
hi, my thoughts looking at your first pic would be to connect little jumpers from both your red wires to the lug next to them and move the other white wire that's on the same lug as the one that is going to your volume pot off of the lug next to it and move that end of the wire to the farthest opposite lug on the switch. get rid of everything else on the switch and try that. your switch looks beat up.

jackal
June 30th, 2012, 09:05 PM
I'd start over with a new switch, that one looks iffy to me.

diffeecult
June 30th, 2012, 09:49 PM
The best I can tell that Area T setup wires up a little different on the switch. I believe you need to disconnect those jumpers and start over. It looks like each red pickup wire needs a jumper to the next closest terminal to it on the same side of the switch. Then the terminal with the white wire to the volume pot looks like it has a jumper that goes across the switch to the last terminal on the other side. But I may be looking at it wrong. Here is the diagram I was trying to figure it from.

http://www.dimarzio.com/sites/default/files/diagrams/AreaT1v1t3wtel.pdf

Jake_Blues
July 3rd, 2012, 12:17 PM
The switch does look rough. That aside, it's behaving as if the neck pup is shorted to ground, so when you switch it into circuit, it shuts down the bridge as well. If you DC the Neck PUP and the bridge still shorts in the middle position, it's in the switch, or the wiring of the switch.