heliotropic
New member
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2006
- Messages
- 2
I recently won a Stingray HH on eBay and yesterday it finally arrived. After unpacking I played around with it for about an hour and everything worked/sounded great (it was even still in tune after its cross-country trip). I made note of a couple adjustments I wanted to make, then put it away and did some errands for awhile. Later in the day I went back to the bass, adjust the saddles on the bridge, neck pickup height, and fixed some string winding issues, and plugged it to play some more. As soon I hit the first note I could tell something was wrong, instead of the "springy" MM tone, I got something closer to what my Jazz bass would make. Not sure what was going on, I experimented for awhile and finally figured out that the coil closest to the bridge was not working in any position that utilizes it.
I opened up the back panel to see if anything had maybe gotten loose during shipping and finally gave way, but all the connections looked good. I checked the pickup as well and it looked ok.
I bought a multimeter today to test the connections and now I'm confused even more. In the pickup picture above, the red wire is for the bridge position, and that wire connects to the middle connetion on the switch. I checked the current between those connections and it works.
On the switch the leads from the pickups are the first two wires in each group of three, the third is ground. Depending on what position the switch is in different leads will be routed to the terminal on the right side of the switch (the rightmost of the pair is ground). Using the multimeter, I checked the connection between the red middle connection and the output wire, and it was fine. The black wire was ok as well. So this implies the switch is working.
Now is where I'm stuck, I checked the connection between the red wire on the pickup, and the output on the switch, and the connection was bad. I tried the black wire on the pickup, and it worked, which agrees with what I hear when the bass is plugged in. The problem is that if the connection between the pickup and switch is good, and the switch itself is good, why won't the pickup work through the switch?
I took the switch apart and didn't notice any obstructions and the contacts seemed fine, but there's a problem somewhere otherwise the pickup should work. Is there anything else I should be checking? I guess its a possibility the pickup went bad, but I've never had one fail on me like this before.
I opened up the back panel to see if anything had maybe gotten loose during shipping and finally gave way, but all the connections looked good. I checked the pickup as well and it looked ok.
I bought a multimeter today to test the connections and now I'm confused even more. In the pickup picture above, the red wire is for the bridge position, and that wire connects to the middle connetion on the switch. I checked the current between those connections and it works.
On the switch the leads from the pickups are the first two wires in each group of three, the third is ground. Depending on what position the switch is in different leads will be routed to the terminal on the right side of the switch (the rightmost of the pair is ground). Using the multimeter, I checked the connection between the red middle connection and the output wire, and it was fine. The black wire was ok as well. So this implies the switch is working.
Now is where I'm stuck, I checked the connection between the red wire on the pickup, and the output on the switch, and the connection was bad. I tried the black wire on the pickup, and it worked, which agrees with what I hear when the bass is plugged in. The problem is that if the connection between the pickup and switch is good, and the switch itself is good, why won't the pickup work through the switch?
I took the switch apart and didn't notice any obstructions and the contacts seemed fine, but there's a problem somewhere otherwise the pickup should work. Is there anything else I should be checking? I guess its a possibility the pickup went bad, but I've never had one fail on me like this before.
