Over-driven tone after new 50's wiring and Seth Lover PuPs

[red57strat]

That's a pretty sloppy wiring job. Are the pots in different locations than standard on purpose?

It makes me wonder if what you're hearing is actually distortion (as we know it from guitar amps). Could it be a noise caused by poor wiring that sounds like distortion.

Can you provide a clip?

 

[fred4321]

Man, that would be too bad after putting it all together!

Thanks Wallaby, but I'm not too stressed about it.
Its on eBay and Marketplace at the moment to try and get my money back (if thats ever possible) and move it to a new home. The jorney was fun and I learn a lot.
More dissapointed that it didn't satisfy my quest for tone, but certainly reinforced my love of the Tele tone.
Bought and sold lots of guitars over the years.
I've reduced my guitar stash from 12 to 5 now, and selling off 2 with the aim of a Tele Pro or something similar.

 

[fred4321]

That's a pretty sloppy wiring job. Are the pots in different locations than standard on purpose?

No they are positioned to match the original setup on the guitar.

 

[cousinpaul]

I'd try it through a different amp before making a decision.

 

[wabashslim]

Used from Ebay, eh? If they are real Seth Lovers some nimrod might have stuck some heavy magnets in there, maybe even the big Alembic Hot Rod ceramics from years ago. Those can make the guitar loud, midrangy & untameably harsh no matter where you set the controls...but not always.

Personally I'd email Duncan about this; they might offer to check them out if you're willing to send them in...and if they've been altered or are forgeries go after the seller.

 

[robt57]

Did you try lowering them? like 3-4mm?

 

[cousinpaul]

It looks like one of the braided single conductor leads was cut off short and extended with a piece of wire. That could be a potential trouble spot. Do any of the controls work normally? Try them all separately and see if you can isolate the problem to a specific pot.

 

[AJBaker]

Here's my take:
I can't read the values on the pots, but I'm going to guess that those are linear volume pots. They have the effect that turning from 0 to 3 already gives you most of the volume you're going to get, and turning from 4 to 10 doesn't change too much.
If you previously had logarithmic pots then you are now getting the same volume at 3 that you used to get at 8 (or something like that).

If you're someone who likes adjusting the volume on the guitar (like me), then you'll want logarithmic pots.

Can you read what's written on the back of the pots by any chance?


Otherwise, Seth Lovers are well known and respected PAF style pickups, they're about as good as you're going to get for the PAF sound.

 

[cousinpaul]

If the problem affects both pickups and tone controls, take a look at the selector switch. A short to ground could leave the pickups stuck wide open.

 

[arlum]

I'm not understanding any of this. I've used Seth Lovers on Heritage guitars with the guitar volume and tone controls on 10 and, while they have a full bodied mid range like most vintage humbuckers, they still sound perfectly clean when going through the front end of a tube amp with the amp volume set around 3 on the dial. More than 3 on the amp starts getting crunchy but that's the amps reaction to virtually any pickup type. The only time I roll back the volume control on the guitar is when I'm using higher volume / gain settings on my tube amps or using good quality gain / fuzz pedals that clean up with a rollback of the guitars volume control. Played into a clean amp set up a guitars volume control should be able to be wide open with the guitar's sound continuing to remain clean. (Note. This is based on vintage era low to low / med. output pickups. Super Distortions and Super 3's are a different animal. From the '70s onward pickups were sometimes purposely built for this purpose but certainly not in the days of the Seth Lovers, P.A.F's., vintage Ray Butts etc). Either these aren't Seth Lovers, something is wired up wrong or a component in the guitars control cavity is wrong or working improperly.