First time solder soldier here. Finished installing a new set of Hank Marvin Kinmans late last night on my '88 MIJ 62 reissue strat. Used Kinman's wirogram for the blender setup along with all new pots, switch,jack, cloth covered wire, etc. from Bill Callaham. Used a 500K pot for the blender. Quality components. I finally reassembled the body only (no neck or strings yet) and plugged it in. Serious hum especially when any pole piece or other metal part (pot, pickguard screw, etc. is touched.) Questions:

1) Maybe this is normal and goes away when the strings / neck is put back on? Not likely, but maybe??

2) I installed the treble bypass filter on the volume pot per instructions but it wasn't clear whether or not this should be done on the blender mod? Could this be the problem?

3) I grounded off the volume pot to the back of the tremolo spring tree. Could I have used the wrong pot to ground? Also, the metal on the tremolo spring thing was difficult to solder as it seemed to have some tupe of waxy / oily coating. Tried cleaning it, and did get a tight joint but maybe this is the problem?

4) Although I believe I checked at least twice, there is a remote chance I soldered the wrong leads to the output jack?? Will check this first!

Any and all comments / suggestions sincerely appreciated.

Sean

1) Definitely sounds like a ground problem. Don't think strings have anything to do with it.

2) Volume pot treble mod is perfectly compatible with the blender pot, no problem there.

3) not sure about this, but yeah a bad solder joint could cause a poor ground

4) this would certainly explain it. Kinman's diagram is very good though....I'd definitely double check this, as the output jack is where the whole guitar gets grounded through your cable to your amp

Just for future reference, generally when I do stuff like this I make one change at a time. Change hardware, then install pups, then add mods, etc. That way it makes it easier to troubleshoot.

Good luck!!

So funky I can smell it!

Thanks. I'm sure it is a ground problem. Another thing I forgot to mention (and Kinman doesn't really make clear). Do all the ground leads coming off the PUs need to be soldered together to the vol. pot? I soldered them all in seperate places on the pot (including the ground from the jack). This could be the problem???

Don't think so, as soldering them all to a common location would effectively be the same as soldering them together.

Do you perhaps have the jack contacts mixed up? You have to look real carefully at the input jack to see which is the correct contact going to ground. Your positive input wire needs to go to the part that makes contact with the tip of the guitar cable, and the negative/ground wire needs to go to the part that makes contact with the sleeve of the cable.

If in doubt, try reversing the leads at the input jack, b/c that could certainly be causing your problem. Let me know if that works

So funky I can smell it!

Yup. After looking at it several times, turns out that was the problem! I was simply looking at Kinmans diagram and soldering to what appeared to be the shorter lug. Thanks a bunch, can't wait to fire this puppy up!

Cool, glad I could help. Enjoy!

So funky I can smell it!

Fired her up last night and everything sounds great.....except......the volume doesn't turn the guitar all the way down? Only goes about half volume? Any ideas? Anyway, the Hank Marvins definately have a vintage vibe that is very different from the Torres PUPS I took off. Definately less hot but a lot more clarity and sparkle. Need to spend some more time playing and less time soldering for now!

Hmmm, that could be a number of things....definitely want to get that fixed too.

If I was you I would go back to a stock wiring. Remove the treble retention mod and the blender pot mod, and try to get everything working in a stock wiring. Then you're in a better position to add mods and have everything work correctly.

On another note, I find the volume pot treble retention mod indispensable, but like to do a different mod than the blender pot. I had the blender pot for a while and thought it was cool, but I find that having a tone control for the bridge pickup is much more useful. Very easy mod from the stock wiring too, just moving one wire....what you get is a tone on the neck pickup, and on the bridge instead of the middle pickup. Makes the bridge a whole lot more useful by itself, and also opens up the neck/middle position by reducing the loading and restoring a bit of treble.

If you're interested, once you get everything working stock I can give you step by step directions for the tone pot mod.

So funky I can smell it!

quote:

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Originally posted by mandoman:
Fired her up last night and everything sounds great.....except......the volume doesn't turn the guitar all the way down? Only goes about half volume? Any ideas? Anyway, the Hank Marvins definately have a vintage vibe that is very different from the Torres PUPS I took off. Definately less hot but a lot more clarity and sparkle. Need to spend some more time playing and less time soldering for now!

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I had the same thing happen to me, I just not grounded the volume pot (the far right tab as looking at the pot from the bottom.) Maybe that is it.

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