PRS SE Paul's Guitar Gut Shot

[rich-96db]

To my ears, it sounded like the PRS SE Paul's Guitar had a treble-bleed cap. I opened up the control cavity and confirmed that it did have a treble-bleed cap.

Here's a gut shot for anyone interested:

 

[Eddie kim]

Nice

 

[Glide-bpm]

Us likeses ta sees tha gutses.........

 

[elvis]

That is far more complicated than I expected.

 

[shimmilou]

That is interesting, I did the same thing, and made a drawing of the min toggles while I was in there. Looks like yours is wired the same as mine (good sign). I cleaned up the wiring a bit, I hate that wad of wires, zip-tied like that. Also interesting to note that when a pup is in single coil mode in this guitar, the unused coil is completely out of the circuit, truly isolated. This is unlike most other coil split circuits where one coil is shorted out, or one coil is selected, but the other coil is still connected.

 

[Herr Squid]

That's a lotta wires! I would make such a mess if I tried going in there with a soldering iron...

 

[shimmilou]

lol! And they're tiny too! It's not too bad, a good drawing can be of help.

 

[rich-96db]

That is interesting, I did the same thing, and made a drawing of the min toggles while I was in there. Looks like yours is wired the same as mine (good sign). I cleaned up the wiring a bit, I hate that wad of wires, zip-tied like that. Also interesting to note that when a pup is in single coil mode in this guitar, the unused coil is completely out of the circuit, truly isolated. This is unlike most other coil split circuits where one coil is shorted out, or one coil is selected, but the other coil is still connected.

It's a lot easier to see on yours after the cleanup. Is it just me, or is there no cap on the tone control? I've noticed on mine that in single coil mode, you have to turn the tone down to 3 or 4 to hear much of a difference.

 

[shimmilou]

There is a tone cap near the volume pot, connected to the lower lug of the volume pot, orange or brownish rectangular (poly I think), under the resistor, and I can see it in both pics above, although covered by wires.

 

[jcolmn]

I thank you for this diagram. I was able to pick up a pair of SE TCI pickups to try and was initially using the Core Paul's guitar wiring diagram. Needless to say, it did not work. Will try this as this looks like it will work!

 

[Tonart]

I am totally amazed. Not by the impressive electronics, but by the fact that anyone can actually understand it.

If it’s a bomb I’ll just cut the red wire. Boom!

It’s beyond me.

 

[John Beef]

Hm, this just looks like a pretty standard setup to me. Each pickup has 4 wires and are wired up for coil spits on mini-toggles in a traditional manner. I would love to compare this to a Core Paul's. From what I understand when those pickups split the coils are tapped and the active coil simultaneously gets additional turns of wire activated. That would require a 3 pole switch.

 

[shimmilou]

It's close to a standard setup, but where this configuration differs is that when a pup is split, one coil is completely disconnected from the circuit, both wires of that coil, so the coil is truly isolated. In a standard setup, the split typically shorts out one pup coil and leaves it connected in the circuit. Since the coils of the humbucker pup are next to each other, each can affect the other, and that affect can depend on how the other pup is wired.

 

[Figaro]

I see resistor on the volume pot. What is the resistor for?

Also, would it make any difference to replace the Alpha pots and the 3 way switch with better quality ones?

 

[shimmilou]

The resistor is part of the treble bleed circuit. There is nothing wrong with the stock electronics, mine works perfectly fine. If you aren't having any troubles, why replace anything?

 

[Figaro]

So it has a treble bleed circuit and the pickups can be truly split.
Is that it, or is there something else that gives it it’s TCI tuning?

Anyone know how the SE TCI circuit differs from the Core TCI circuit, other than the quality of the pickups and parts?

 

[yblanco]

Thanks for the info. I have a new SE Paul's guitar and I'm having some intermittent noise. I can not reproduce it 100% of the time but it's there for sure (even happened once playing in stage). Also in two occasions when volume was at max I noticed my tone pot was not changing anything in the sound when moving it from min to max. After moving volume/switches randomly it started working again. Weird. I will follow your pictures/schematics and check all the ground connections before contacting dealer which is in another country.
Can anybody confirm the wiring schematics for Paul's guitar at PRS website (they don't have one for SE model) don't match the Paul's guitar SE model?

Thanks

 

[Boogie]

Hey, Shimmi, any chance you could sche-magic the resistor and caps + pots as well? I’m curious about what’s going on under the hood, too.

 

[yblanco]

Thanks to the encouragement from the pictures in this post i opened the guitar and found several issues related to poor workmanship (I’ll post some pictures tomorrow):
1- pinched black (ground) cable exposing the copper wires
2- only few wires soldered at volume pot from the white cable going to ‘live’ in the TS jack
3- cold solder in the capacitor going from volume to tone pot. I could push and pull the wire from the capacitor since it was not properly soldered until eventually it came out. This could be the source of all my problems.

Redid the solder on those 2 spots and it seems to be OK.

I’ll keep a close eye on the guitar for next few days. Hopefully this will fix the noise and tone problems and will feedback to PRS as this is unacceptable in a brand new guitar of this quality.

 

[shimmilou]

Hey, Shimmi, any chance you could sche-magic the resistor and caps + pots as well? I’m curious about what’s going on under the hood, too.

Sure!

Give me a while, maybe a day or two.