question about Kay guitar pickup wiring (jimmy reed p/u)

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joninc
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question about Kay guitar pickup wiring (jimmy reed p/u)

Post by joninc » Tue May 19, 2015 2:53 pm

i have been really into old Kay guitars for the past few years and got a kay "Lark" guitar and have noticed that the jimmy reed style, blade pickup on this particular guitar
is extremely dull sounding compared to every other guitar i have.

i opened up the volume/tone controls today and saw that there was this big capacitor
or something wired into it...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/141 ... .34.32.jpg

(sorry i don't know how else to share a photo)

i wonder if anyone could tell me if this might be the cause of the dullness? would this
be original or a mod? caps that are super old in electronics often need to be replaced
and i wonder if this may be the case here...

would love any thoughts about that.[/img]
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Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Tue May 19, 2015 5:05 pm

I also love the old Kay guitars. I have a Jazz II that I bought for $150 and then spent $1k fixing/rebuilding. Anyway, I'm no expert but that looks like a resistor to me. Maybe to change the value of the tone or volume pot?

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Post by joninc » Tue May 19, 2015 5:22 pm

hey dave! cool beans. i have a few now (none of the big ticket models) and this is my poor man's thin twin :)

do you think this would have been stock or something that was added on later?

i expected the pickup to be twangy (a la t bone) but it's super dark sounding. like almost
as if you rolled the tone off completely. except it's all the way on.
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Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Tue May 19, 2015 6:55 pm

No idea if it's stock or an add on. If it's on the tone knob it may make things darker by increasing the value of the pot and rolling off more treble.
If you've got any jumpers in your tool box you could try bypassing the pots to see if it affects the tone. Clip one end of your leads to the spot where the pick-up wires are soldered to the pot (wiper and ground) and the other to the + and ground on the output jack.
Beyond that find a good vintage guitar repair guy. There must be some out there in Vancouver.

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Post by norton » Wed May 20, 2015 6:38 am

Are the pots original? Looks like a resistor to me. They roll off treble in a very different way to my ears. Pot values, by themselves, can have a pretty drastic effect on the volume and high end of a pickup.

I'd look there and at the wiring itself. Perhaps the resistor is wired up, mistakenly, in an always on kind of way?

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Post by ashcat_lt » Wed May 20, 2015 3:11 pm

1) At least on this monitor, the picture is extremely dark and so it's tough to see details.

B) It very well could be a rather old axial lead capacitor. Easy way to tell would be disconnect one end of it from the circuit and try to measure resistance through it. I'd bet it will come up open, or else start small and then go big as the cap charges. I'd also bet that if you look up the color code (should be the same as resistor codes) you'll find that it indicates a fairly standard tone cap value.

III) It would be easier to tell from the other angle where we can see all of the lugs involved, but it sure looks like it's stretched between a V and T pot where you might expect a tone cap to be.

d) A resistor in series with the T pot will actually do about the opposite of what was suggested above. By increasing the total max resistance, it will add a bit of bite to the very top end when it's all the way up, but it also increases the total minimum resistance, so that it will never go "all the way down". If it was parallel to the pot, it would be decreasing the total value, and that would make it darker.

v) You can't "bypass" the pots by jumpering as described above, because they're parallel to the jack. It will short the section of the V pot between the pickups on the jack, but if it's all the way up, that means nothing. You would need to snip them loose from ground (and then jumper the top of the V pot) to see what it would be like without them in circuit

Do you have a meter?

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Post by joninc » Wed May 20, 2015 3:31 pm

i'll try to get a new one up quick.

i don't have a meter but i do have a tech i can take it to.
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Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Wed May 20, 2015 4:53 pm

ashcat_lt wrote:1) At least on this monitor, the picture is extremely dark and so it's tough to see details.

B) It very well could be a rather old axial lead capacitor. Easy way to tell would be disconnect one end of it from the circuit and try to measure resistance through it. I'd bet it will come up open, or else start small and then go big as the cap charges. I'd also bet that if you look up the color code (should be the same as resistor codes) you'll find that it indicates a fairly standard tone cap value.

III) It would be easier to tell from the other angle where we can see all of the lugs involved, but it sure looks like it's stretched between a V and T pot where you might expect a tone cap to be.

d) A resistor in series with the T pot will actually do about the opposite of what was suggested above. By increasing the total max resistance, it will add a bit of bite to the very top end when it's all the way up, but it also increases the total minimum resistance, so that it will never go "all the way down". If it was parallel to the pot, it would be decreasing the total value, and that would make it darker.

v) You can't "bypass" the pots by jumpering as described above, because they're parallel to the jack. It will short the section of the V pot between the pickups on the jack, but if it's all the way up, that means nothing. You would need to snip them loose from ground (and then jumper the top of the V pot) to see what it would be like without them in circuit
Do you have a meter?
Schooled. Thanks for the info.

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Post by joninc » Wed May 20, 2015 5:34 pm

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Post by Drone » Thu May 21, 2015 6:41 am

There's a really good forum for Japanese guitars here, Kay / Tiesco / Sears with some pretty knowledgable people.

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/group/tei ... _com_group

My Kay has no original electronics left in it :(
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Post by ashcat_lt » Thu May 21, 2015 1:08 pm

Yep, that's a tone cap. Looks like Brown, Black, Yellow, Black, Red (???), which would be like 0.1uF, 1% tolerance (!!!) and 300V. Yes, I looked that up. 0.1uF is a pretty big cap by today's standards, but was pretty common back in the day.

That cap itself shouldn't make much difference to the tone when the T pot is all the way up, unless it's failed open, and then it would be a little brighter because the T pot would be out of circuit. The values of the pots themselves will have much more impact on the "all the way up" tone. If there are markings on those, I can't see them. A lot of times, these older guitars used pretty big pots, but who knows?

Do the pots do what you'd expect albeit working on a darkish starting sound?

If it was me, I'd snip everything loose, measure all of the components (especially the pickup!), and if that didn't offer any clues, probably try connecting the pickup directly to the jack and see how that sounds.

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Post by joninc » Thu May 21, 2015 1:41 pm

the pots do appear to be working fine.

thanks for all the advice and expertise, i'll see what my tech can figure out!
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Post by Sean Sullivan » Sat May 23, 2015 9:12 pm

Check your pickup height as well being too close to the strings can make a guitar sound dull
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