Muddy Neck Pickup, no tone control

Hi,

I've just finished putting together my latest strat project, and have an issue I'm hoping someone here might be able to help with.

I put in a pre wired pickguard, as although I can solder, I don't much enjoy doing it! Anyway, I had to solder the jack and the ground wire, nothing else.

Plugged in, bridge and middle pups are fine, but the neck is really muddy, like the tone has been rolled the whole way off. Sure enough, the tone control doesn't have any effect.

So I'm wondering what the potential problems are, a wiring issue? a dead tone pot? There is sound coming from the neck pup, and the volume control works with it, so I'm hoping that the pup itself is ok.

So, where should I start the troubleshooting?

thanks,
Hammer

First thing, with the amp plugged into the guitar, take off the pickguard and muddle about with all the wires to see if you get any noise that might indicate a sloppy or bad solder joint, broken or nearly broken wire, or something simple like that.

Next, hate to say it, given what you've said about soldering, but I'd first unsolder one of the neck pup's leads and put a meter on it, see what kind of resistance you have there. Shorted pup could cause muddy sound. If you don't know what the resistance should be, pull another lead off of one of the good pickups and meter that for comparison.

Remove the leads from the affected tone pot and with a meter, check to see that the rated resistance (usually 250K) exists across the two outside terminals. Put one test lead on the center lead and one on an outside lead, and turn the knob, making sure you get a good "sweep" of resistance values. Do the same with the test lead on the other outside lug.

There's always a chance some tired soul at the old wired pickguard factory made a boo-boo and soldered something wrong, too. Check out Fender's website for diagrams of proper Strat wiring, or if you can get a copy of your supplier's wiring diagram, compare to what's on your guitar. http://www.fender.com/support/articles/stratocaster-service-diagrams

Although unlikely, your tone cap could be bad. Unsolder and disconnect one of its leads and see if that improves anything.

Hope this is helpful.

Hey, thanks for that. I'll have to dig out the multi meter and take a look. I have the intended pup values form the manufacturer website, so I'll be able to check against that. I'm really hoping its not the pup though!

Hey,

thanks again for the help. Happy to be able to report back that its now solved. The central lug on the neck tone pot was touching a blob of solder from the tone cap lug connection. Once I separated these, it started working perfectly!

thanks again,

Hammer