S100 tone pots/capacitors

[Bflan in a strange land]

Good evening. I just acquired a 1976 S100. Guitar sounds great. Volume controls work just fine. My issue is with the tone controls. With both the bridge and neck tone, I’m not getting much variance at all when I roll back from 10 to zero. I notice a very slight change for the bridge but it’s very slight and I’m not really noticing anything for the neck.
I opened her up and all of the connections look to be there. I redid a few just to be sure. Original pots and pickups.
Any suggestions before I bring it in to a tech?
Brian

 

[7GuildsandanSG]

Yes. Before you bring it to the tech post lots of pictures of it here.

 

[Bflan in a strange land]

Pictures on the wiring you mean?

 

[7GuildsandanSG]

The whole guitar. We like pictures. Someone with experience will be along soon to answer your questions about the tone controls. In the mean time, we really like pictures!

 

[Bflan in a strange land]

Here are a few

 

[Bflan in a strange land]

Couple of the front

 

[GAD]

Two caps and a resistor on each tone pot? As always I’d defer to @hansmoust but I’d wonder if that’s original.

Pretty guitar!

 

[hansmoust]

That guitar has been worked on; not sure what they were trying to achieve!

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl

 

[Bflan in a strange land]

Thank you fellas. Anyone out there have a photo of the wiring of an S100 from that era?
I have no problem moving stuff around or removing/swapping things before I go to a tech.
I may try removing the resistors and seeing if that makes a difference.

 

[SFIV1967]

Anyone out there have a photo of the wiring of an S100 from that era?

Not sure if they still used 200kohms tone pots or already 500kohms. But I see the 10nF (.01mF) capacitor in your pictures (the dark green one) in the bridge pickup circuit which is correct. The neck pickup circuit capacitor was 47nF (.047mF). That is a high value to make the neck pickup darker for a kind of jazzier sounds. Could be replaced with 22nF.
Zoom into the PDF attached.
It looks like somebody added two treble bleed circuits to your guitar. (the large yellow capacitors with a parallel little resistor).

Ralf

 

[Bflan in a strange land]

Thanks Ralf. I will open her back up later today. Maybe I can remove those treble bleeds and see if that has any effect. And then I can go from there. Swapping out capacitors if needed. Always eager to save a little $ by avoiding the tech visit.

 

[poa77]

Hi, don't know if it'll help but here's a pic of my 1976 S-100 innards. It had a couple of extra mini toggles in when I got it but I removed those. I'm not sure but I think one tone pot isn't original but apart from that I believe the wiring is as it was, tone caps etc?!!! I'd love your white one. Mine is a lovely cherry sunburst but I can't find another in the same finish (usually just cherry, walnut, black or white)? Anyway, if you need better pics I can dig it out and take some more. Also just found a pic of my black 1973 S-90 and I imagine the same wiring is just duplicated for both pickups in the S-100 etc. Cheers, Stu

 

[Bflan in a strange land]

Thanks Stu. It could be that the caps were changed out on mine at some point. I’m going to try playing with them and putting different ones on and see if that makes a difference.

do you notice much of a difference in tone when you turn your tone knobs from 10-0?

Also that’s a killer looking guitar. Very cool finish.

Brian

 

[SFIV1967]

poa77's picture shows the original capacitors, left the neck pickup circuit capacitor with 47nF (.047mF) connected to the upper pots and right the bridge pickup circuit capacitor with 10nF (.01mF) connected to the lower pots.



Ralf

 

[poa77]

Thanks Stu. It could be that the caps were changed out on mine at some point. I’m going to try playing with them and putting different ones on and see if that makes a difference.

do you notice much of a difference in tone when you turn your tone knobs from 10-0?

Also that’s a killer looking guitar. Very cool finish.

Brian

Hi Brian, yeah, my tone pots do exactly what you'd expect so I'd say grab some capacitors of the spec Ralf mentions and wire them in as you see them in the pics. Hopefully you'll be up and running again in no time. Cheers, Stu

 

[Bflan in a strange land]

So I removed the two treble bleeds and I didn’t hear much of a difference. I swapped the neck tone cap out and that did it. Thanks guy for the insight. The Guitar is awesome.