Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi Everyone,

First of all, I'm new here and am building my first guitar, so apologies if I write anything that doesn't make a ton of sense. Second, I did my best to make sure this topic hasn't been discussed elsewhere on the forum, but if it has, my apologies, and I'd appreciate a link to the thread.

I'm building an electric semi-hollow, and I'm having an issue with the tone control, and specifically the tone caps (I believe), that I can't figure out. I finished wiring the prototype last night, and after some troubleshooting (bad volume pot, had a treble bleed resistor/cap acting as a ground loop) everything's in working order except that I get no audible response from the tone control - you turn the pot, and nothing happens. My guesses were either (a) I screwed up the wiring, (b) the pot is bad, or (c) the cap is bad. I'm using a 500k pot and a .047uF capacitor. However, I don't believe the wiring is screwed up or that the pot is bad, because when I wired a 100uF cap in parallel to the .047uF, I get a tone response as I'd hope for. However, I also believe the cap is sound, because I appear to be able to both charge it and track a discharge using a multimeter (I'm charging it with the ohm/resistance setting, and then testing the voltage as it drains). Also, the fact the the 100uF cap seemed to work really threw me, as from what I understand that rating is way higher than you would typically use for a tone cap. Any thoughts?

I've attached the wiring diagram below, and my apologies if it's hard to follow - while it works for me, I'm also guessing it isn't typical. It includes a Ghost piezo system (the terminals on the left, battery, need for ganged pots, etc.), and, ugh, a lot of switches. Two notes:
1. The two horizontal blue lines connecting the two volume pots and two tone pots are just to show that the pots are ganged and do not represent a wired connection
2. The light blue lines that connect the left terminals on the volume pots to the middle terminals on the tone pots DO NOT connect to the left terminals on the tone pots (just a consequence of the program i used to draw the diagram)

Let me know if there's any additional information I can provide to help clarify things. Also, thanks a ton in advance for the help - I feel like a lost half the hair on my head last night...

Peter

Perhaps the tone pots should be connected to the wipers of the volume pots?
Just a guess...
Good luck, Peter.
Dan

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Dan, thanks for the thought. Tried it out and unfortunately had the same result, but I'll keep plugging away. Thanks again for the help.

Peter