Do it yourself wiring

[fuzzymanpeach]

i recently just bought a wiring upgrade kit and new texas special pickups and my grandfather and i did all the soldering work. when i get home and plug it in, they worked but there was a lot of noise and hum. does anyone have any advice about wiring a guitar yourself or what we might have done wrong?

[cugel]

the best thing you can do is to take careful clear pictures of everything and post them here. in the meanwhile check, recheck, and triple check everything against the wiring diagram. sounds like a ground problem. . check for bad solder joints or just resolder everything. unless you guys have solder experience you may have some lousy joints. it may be as simple as moving some of the wires so they dont touch or something like that. you wont break anything by moving the wires here and there. it just sounds bad

[Klein Pickups]

Check the solder joints. Could be a bad solder joint or ground. Also check the wiring to the Input Jack Leads, those are often mixed up.

[Klein Pickups]

We are on this topic QUICK

[Stringrazor]

I find the toughest part of pickup wiring is solding the grounds to the pot cases. You need a soldering iron with sufficient wattage or you'll get bad solder joints. Check those solder points first. Make sure all grounds are tied together including the bridge ground wire.

[RvChevron]

How bad is the noise and hum? If the Texas Specials are higher output than your previous set, you can expect more noise and hum but it shouldn't be too much like night and day difference.

Sounds like a grounding issue.

I've been using a 45 watt soldering iron with a slot screw driver tips for years and it takes care of all soldering jobbies from tiny toggle swtich lugs to the back of the pots to spring claws.

[Stringrazor]

Originally Posted by RvChevron

How bad is the noise and hum? If the Texas
I've been using a 45 watt soldering iron with a slot screw driver tips for years and it takes care of all soldering jobbies from tiny toggle swtich lugs to the back of the pots to spring claws.

A 45 Watt iron is perfect for soldering onto large items that tend to act as heat sinks but you have to be quick and careful with smaller items as it can melt insulation off small wire in seconds.

Someday I'll get a variable wattage soldering station...

[Eagle1]

A 25watt is more usual for this ,more than adequate, even for the spring claw(if you take the springs off to prevent them acting as a heat sink ,same goes for metal control knobs when soldering to the backs of pots.)

[ScottB]

Did you remember to ground the bridge?

[dougk]

Star simple- my money is on you wired the output jack backwards... It happens to all of us once

[Stringrazor]

I just rewired 2 guitars the other day. I used a 45 Watt element for one and a 25 Watt element for the other. The 45 Watt did a much better job on the pot chassis ground points. The 25 Watt iron was able to handle that task too but just barely and it took a lot longer. These are old, screw-in type ceremic elements so maybe they're not as effecient as a newer iron.