OK. I have an Ibanez RGT 42 equipped with EMG's. An 81 in the bridge and a 60 in the neck.

A while back I took it to a local shop to have installed (I'm not much when it comes to electronics) I gave him the schematic and told him I wanted it setup for single volume, no tone, and a 3 way selector.

I come back a few days later and it looks nigger rigged....the guy swore it worked though...so I try it out in the shop.

I plug in and start playing and smoke starts coming out of the back cavity!!!

Needless to say I got my money back...

I took it to someone I trust more and he fixed em up for me for the time being....but there was always this problem....

Now though, whenever I play, the tone gets muddy as all hell...like a neck pickup that is sunk all the way into the body...THROUGH THE BRIDGE!!

Its seriously killing the playability of the guitar, and my patience.

Oddly, if I wiggle the pickup selector, the sound goes away completely...but I wiggle it the other way it brightens up a little...but not like the normal EMG tone I am used to.

Can someone please shed some light on what may be wrong?

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if smoke came out of the guitar after it was pathetically installed.. are you certain that no damage was done to the pickups? you might have been entitled to more than a refund of service.. perhaps they should have replaced your pickups for you.

honestly, MANY "techs" at music stores are terrible at soldering. you're better off reading for 5 minutes on the net about how to solder, spending $25 for an iron and some solder, and doing it yourself. it's childishly easy.. pretty much connect-the-dots following a wiring diagram.

and then you get some good practical experience and feel even more connected with your guitar.

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I did the soldering first, and I couldn't get the damn things to work...the schematics that EMG's supply weren't really specific with what I wanted...

The jack was a mono by default on my guitar, and they didn't say anything about that. Also I tried to do the default control selector the first time too...and that didn't work. I than bought two more control selectors...and STILL couldn't get it to work...so I thought I would take it to the "professional's"....

I was afraid someone was going to say the pickups are fried...I'm not surprised.

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The pots and switch contacts might be burned, not to mention the connecting wiring. That will cause pups to sound like uter shit.

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man i must say that blows ass!

I'm going to agree with mctriple, buy a solder and do it yourself. It might seem confusing at first, but after a while it makes sense.

Last summer I completely rewiring my guitar and it took me about 4-5hrs. I kept running into no output. Looked around the internet and boom found a cure.

The best advice I can give you is to make sure you write down the original way the wires were hooked up. That way if something doesn't work you can backtrack until it works again and start all over. Also if you are using humbuckers and buy new pots...get 500k

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Take it back to the fucker that ruined it!

He'll fuck it up again!!! lol

I'm goin back to florida in 2 weeks, so I'll wait till than. Thanks for the advice though guys....if it comes down to it I'll just buy new pickups (again)

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i just noticed a problem on one of my guitars. whenever i have my volume at 10 and go down to nine there is a 1 second pause where no sound comes out. then when i go down further it sounds good. is this a problem?

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lol if you cant get a friend who kicks ass at electronics. A friend of mine just rewired my dean hardtail (2 vol 2 tone + COIL SPLITTING!! that's about as complicated as you can get) with little trouble. i watched him do it, and even when he ran into troublesome wire (that kept breaking...the white one on the Jazz pickup specifically) he just took another peice of wire and extended the fucker, and at the same time soldered the red to the white to the extension...pretty creative i must say.


it's not that hard to do if you learn how to yourself.


Get a shit guitar and $10 pickups and do it yourself to learn.

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It could be that theyre still wired wrong, I would need to see the way he wired it to make an acurate response. It could be as much as moving one wire over. But with the smoke thing it could be that the wiring or a pot burned. I woudnt worry about the pickups being fried, theyre only magnets after all. Worst thing is you might have to buy new wiring and try again. Why no tone, is there only one knob one the guitar, you could install a tone pot anyway and just tape it in the cavity maxed out, that way you could follow the schematics exactly.

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Right, I would just try replacing the pots, switch, and wire first. Don't go buy new pups just yet.

I burned a pot once with a soldering iron and didn't know it until I pluged it up. Then I noiticed the tone sucked balls. I replaced the pot and everything was fine.

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Pots get burned out when they are heated up too much by the soldering iron, usually when the person soldering doesn't heat up the flux properly and they spend ages trying to get it to melt.

I don't know if anyone actually mentioned why this happens.

Some 'techs' need to be shot.

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