[Help Needed] Weak Guitar Signal/Bad Soldering?

[PremierProductions]

So my 8 string recently decided to weak out on me in the middle of guitar tracking for an album that is currently being engineered. I say in the middle, but I really mean after only 2 songs in. I need to get this sorted asap so we can continue tracking, so if I can't figure anything out on my own, I will have to take it to a tech in a day or two. Basically, out of nowhere, the signal from the guitar became about half as strong, obviously resulting in a weak tone. I have a Lundgren M8 in the bridge (the only connected pickup) and had it all installed/rewired/soldered etc by a tech here around a year ago. Never had an issue since. When it comes to all of this electrical stuff, I really just don't know enough to be able to come up with a good fix. Note: I already tried different cables, as well as tracking different guitars, all of which were fine and sounded normal. The Lundgren is passive, so its not a dead battery, although the sound it's giving sort of resembles a weak battery if it had active pup's.

I'm basically wanting to know if these connections look okay, and if they do, what could it possibly be? Do the solder points look dull/bad? Also, the gray wire is the one that connects to the Lundgren. The red wires are for the old (active) pickups so they aren't really of concern as the neck pickup is still installed, just disconnected and basically only sitting there to keep from having an empty pickup slot. What I don't know, is what the small red/yellow wires coming from the main gray cable are, or what the small green/blue wires are for. As you can see, the red/yellow wires aren't connected to anything and have electrical tape wrapped around the ends (no idea why?)

http://i.imgur.com/K5Njc0s.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/YsF7dW1.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/qlBMYya.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/SEgpgrN.jpg

 

[Pickasso]

First thing I would check is the output jack. Is it loose, twisting? Bad connection? Disconnect it enough from the guitar so you can see the connections. If you have a 'sudden' problem as described, the output jack is my bet, might need replacing.

The 2 wires soldered and taped on a 4 conductor humbucker is normal, that is the split coil connections I think.

 

[dominus_malas]

4 Conductor pickups have extra wires for coil splitting. If you don't use that, then the standard practice is to take the extra wires and tape them off. Then you'll typically have two wires for ground (one colored, one bare) and one wire for hot/signal.

It sounds like one of the pots (or connections to them) could be bad. If you plan on having it rewired in the future, you could try bypassing the pots entirely. I never use the volume or tone pots on my guitars, so I just run the output of the pickup directly to the jack - so I would connect the bridge ground wire and pickup ground wires to the sleeve and the hot/signal wire to the tip. All you need are some wire strippers and some electrical tape and would use the existing wires from the jack. (Remove the wires from the pots, NOT the jack.)

If you run directly to the jack, obviously you have no volume or tone controls. It's like turning them both up to 11. You end up with a slightly louder and brighter signal.

 

[PremierProductions]

4 Conductor pickups have extra wires for coil splitting. If you don't use that, then the standard practice is to take the extra wires and tape them off. Then you'll typically have two wires for ground (one colored, one bare) and one wire for hot/signal.

It sounds like one of the pots (or connections to them) could be bad. If you plan on having it rewired in the future, you could try bypassing the pots entirely. I never use the volume or tone pots on my guitars, so I just run the output of the pickup directly to the jack - so I would connect the bridge ground wire and pickup ground wires to the sleeve and the hot/signal wire to the tip. All you need are some wire strippers and some electrical tape and would use the existing wires from the jack. (Remove the wires from the pots, NOT the jack.)

If you run directly to the jack, obviously you have no volume or tone controls. It's like turning them both up to 11. You end up with a slightly louder and brighter signal.

Although I have already pulled the output jack out and glanced over it to see that it didn't appear (at least at first glance) to be disconnected anywhere or have any bad connections, I'll definitely check it again to see. I haven't really thought about achieving any sort of tonal benefit through bypassing the volume/tone knobs, so I'm going to take your advice on that for the tone knob at least haha. I still think I would like a volume control, but only one at that. Tone knobs, pickup switches, push/pull coil taps, etc are all useless to me with this guitar because i never plan to use my 8 string for anything other than really heavy shit. Anything needing a neck pickup, I've got better options for haha. I will probably just run it back to my tech and have him only run it to the one volume pot before hitting the output, and bypassing the tone pot.

 

[PremierProductions]

Took it by the tech today, to find out that the lug on the bottom of one of the volume pots had gotten turned just slightly to where the lug was touching the paint/wood, which caused the weak signal. Felt like an idiot but at least I know what to look for next time right??