Guitar tech or Luthier Electronics questions!?

SuperB23 · March 25th, 2009, 12:09 PM

I recently bought a Epiphone Zephyr Blues Deluxe w/Gibson P100's. It is like a 49 Gibson ES-5. It had originally had 3 P90's now it has the three Gibson P100's. It has three volume knobs one for each pickup and one tone knob for the whole guitar. For somereason my middle volume knob for the middle pickup isn't working. When I turn all the volume knobs down there is still some sound coming from the guitar and it sounds like the middle pickup but at about half volume. When I turn the middle knob all the way up it sounds exactly the same. The bridge and neck pickups are way louder the knobs work fine on them. The tone knob seems to work fine too.

Does anyone know what this problem is from? Is it most likely just a loose wire or something like that? Thanks for any help!!

The guitar is awesome and I can't wait to get this problem fixed!!!! I bought a bigsby, roller bridge, and new tuners for it.

GuitarHut · July 1st, 2009, 02:29 PM

check the switch, and if u can get a multi-meter, you can measure the amount of output using the ohms channel, and see if the pick-up itself is dying out.

tazzboy · July 1st, 2009, 05:18 PM

Yeah it sounds like your pickup selector might need to be replace? Did you buy this new or use?

Wally · July 2nd, 2009, 12:13 PM

How did we miss this posting back in March???? My apologies, SuperB23. I would hope that you have found the answer to the question long ago. I would imagine that the only way to know what was going wrong would be to pull the electronics and test the pickups for output. IT could be that whoever installed the P100's wired the pickup in parallel, but that doesn't account for the weirdness in how the middle volume pot works..or rather doesn't work.

chuckedup · July 4th, 2009, 10:52 PM

did you say the tone knob still works on this phantom power pickup? if so sounds like switch problem. if not the powers getting to the pickup thru some other avenue. i had a simular prob once where the ground for a pickup came in contact with a hot wire and ran it in reverse polarity. give her a good shake like your trying to get a lil tremlo action see if it pops or cuts out. if somthing comes loose it was poorly put togather anyway. hope it turns out to be simple. goodluck guy...laters.....chuck

chuckedup · July 4th, 2009, 11:04 PM

oh yeah, a shorted pot will do the same thing but i believe youd have to have the pickup selector set on this pickup or at least one of its combo settings. ive been shorted on pot before and it was no fun....laters......chuck