SC245 delivered today...low output bridge pickup

[utvols83]

Bought a 2013 SC245 and it was delivered today. Well packaged and no physical issues. Hook it up to my Rectoverb and the neck pickup worked great. Unfortunately, the bridge pickup was MUCH lower in volume and had some very apparent fuzz when playing. It was quiet when I wasn't playing, but definitely had some fuzz when playing. This was on the clean channel of my amp with the gain set extremely low. The neck pickup is set very low and the bridge pickup is set relatively high, so I don't think the difference in volume is due to the level of the pickups. The previous owner had the tone caps swapped to some Sprague paper in oil caps, but I wouldn't think it would be a problem with those. He also said that he didn't have that issue before shipping and offered to pay for any repair, so I trust that this might be caused from UPS tossing it around during shipping.

Any ideas? I checked to make sure there were not any solder points that were broken or any other obvious issues to a non-guitar tech like myself.

 

[rugerpc]

Solder joints can look solid and still not be conductive. That is where I'd start.

 

[AP515]

I had a similar problem once (not fuzzy, but low output), and it was the bare wire from the cap touching the pup wire. check the replaced cap terminals for wires touching.

 

[justmund]

Yup, also the cap wire can touch the inside of the (conductive) cavity and make all sorts of weird stuff happen.

I recently worked that one out the hard way when I installed the electronics from my SAS in my Santana.

 

[utvols83]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I opened it up again and hooked it up to my amp. Did some light wiggling of the pickup wires going to the volume and tone pots. Finally found the culprit. One of the pickup wires going to the volume pot was interfering with another wire somehow. All I can tell is that it looks like the solder point on the pot for that wire is almost blending with the solder point for another wire. I need to look at the schematic so I can tell exactly what I'm looking at and describe it better. Anyways, I'm already checking with a local PRS dealer/tech to see about coil tapping and making sure everything is cleaned up in there. Just glad to know that nothing is broken. Thanks again for the responses.