LUKE 1 wiring question

[deekayman]

Hi

Could anyone share some idea why would my Luke 1 (1995) with EMG pickups (all stock) that I just purchased,
sound out of phase only when in the 4th position (on 5 way switch)?
That is in between neck and middle position.

Every other position sounds normal and only that 4th position is out of phase, thin and weak.

I checked the wiring and compared it with my Luke 2 wiring, and there's nothing there that is different...all the wires are soldered in identical positions
on the 5 way switch and on the pcb board (even the wires are the same color).

What could it be?

 

[beej]

Is this a new guitar for you? Did the previous owner swap pickups/rewire it? Or is this just happening out of the blue?

Pretty hard to know what the issue is without having the guitar in front of me. If you can post pictures of the pickups/wiring, we can make some guesses.

 

[deekayman]

Is this a new guitar for you? Did the previous owner swap pickups/rewire it? Or is this just happening out of the blue?

Pretty hard to know what the issue is without having the guitar in front of me. If you can post pictures of the pickups/wiring, we can make some guesses.

Hi Beej

Thanks for your response .

Yes, I just got this guitar couple of days ago and I checked the guitar thoroughly and I reckon that everything is stock with wiring.

I've been modifying, repairing and building guitars for a long, long time as a hobby(also I'm electronic technician) but this problem spins my head around.

My guess is that a neck pickup (or neck pickup wiring) is a culprit as every position on a 5 way switch works faultlessly apart from the 4th where this week, out of phase signal comes through.

If it was a middle pickup issues then the out of phase would be present also in 2nd position (bridge + middle) but all is fine there.

As I was saying, I've done visual comparison of wiring with my Luke 2 and there's nothing there that stands out being different.

Even the soldering on PCB board and on 5 way superswitch looks untouched from the factory.

Well, please have a look at my photos and you maybe you can notice something there that I'm blind to see.

Regards
Drazen

 

[deekayman]

More

 

[beej]

Yeah ... I also don't see any obvious issues there. (Thought it looks like the bridge leads have been resoldered- maybe the previous owner swapped it out at some point.)

I'm not that familiar with EMGs, but I don't think you can wire them out of phase by reversing the leads. So I would guess that this is an issue with the neck pickup, assuming they're all original.

I'd suggest reaching out to EMG to ask directly.