strat wiring question

[Wrong-Note Rod]

This odd thing happened with my mongrel strat. The body is from a mid 90s american standard. Its nice, typical bathtub route.

I had a pickguard on it that had a Rio Grande Stelly in the bridge. Sounded good.

I bought an allparts all maple neck and sent it to my friend to finish and install. He did a great job - but now the guitar sounds very dark and boomy.

He claims he looked inside the guitar, he always does and comments about how crappy my wiring is.. it may be but it always sounds good when i finish.

Is it possible that he could have poked around and done something to change the sound so drastically? by accident? If so, what could make a guitar suddenly sound very dark?

 

[waparker4]

The tone cap could be wired wrong. My guess is your tone control doesn't do anything now?

 

[Wrong-Note Rod]

the tone control still works. If you turn it down it sounds almost muffled into sheer mud now. All the way up and its bassy and very boomy.

 

[waparker4]

Oh well then I have no clue from afar. Might want to open it up and wire the pickups straight to the jack to see if its not just how the guitar sounds after the neck was changed and setup altered. Are the same brand strings you usually use on it?

 

[Wrong-Note Rod]

thats a pretty good idea, wiring it straight to the jack and take a listen. same strings I always use.

I've got a zillion pickups... i'm sure eventually I'll find something to drop in that agrees with the guitar.

 

[JimiRayKing]

I wouldn't think a simple neck swap would have such a dramatic effect on the tone. Has to be something electronic, which can be hard to diagnose. Something in your post made me think you've wired guitars before. If you're even somewhat decent at it, you can re-wire the whole thing in very little time. Might come to that but I'd start by giving it a detailed review of the wiring, paying special attention to solder joints as well as making sure something isn't grounded or shorting. If everything looks good, start at one end of the signal chain and re-solder/replace one component at a time, checking the sound after each change. That's time consuming and, quite honestly, this is where I'd probably opt to spend a little time redoing the whole thing from scratch. But then again, I look for opportunities to break out the soldering iron.

 

[3 Chord]

Is this problem in all pickup positions?