software

so i was putting a new volume pot in my explorer, got it wired up and everything.....but it doesnt do its job. the sound comes out fine, but when i turn it down the volume slightly decreases. doesnt go off, doesnt decrease properly....just goes down a tiny bit. anybody have an idea?

Did you forget to solder one terminal to the back of the pot?

Or forget to attach it to ground?

What Lew said. Lack of a ground causes that exact problem.
Remember, the back of a pot isn't ground . . . the sleeve terminal of the output jack is.

im pretty sure i did it right. theres a bunch of crap in there i dont even know what it is, but i just wired it up just like gibson had the old pot, and this happens. alright, i took some pics to try and clarify thisok, so from this big gray wire (from the toggle), there are a white (to neck vol.), red (2), yellow amp; green (1), and black (to tone) wires. in the original wiring, the red was to the middle post, and green amp; yellow were grounded on the back of the volume pot. all this i understood. now comes the ones i havent experienced before. 3, the long yellow wire, connects the tops of all 3 pots, which i presume is to carry the grounding. and 4, what im guessing is the wire attached to the bridge, was soldered to the top of the bridge volume pot. now all this i repeated for the new pot, and it worked only as i described. can any of you see where im going wrong?

also, gibson did a sloppyass job of wiring. heres the neck volume pot, which was by far the neatest of the volumes, so i just did the bridge
.......bump.

If you wired your new pot exactly the same as your old pot or the pot you did not replace, then I have no idea what to tell you. Most likely you're just not seeing what you did differantly to the new pot that you installed and suddenly you'll see what you did wrong and the light will go on in your head with a big quot;AHA!quot; That's the way it often goes with these kinds of problems. Just keep looking at it until you see what's missing. Good luck! Lew

Just to reiterate . . . what you are describing is what happens if you don't have the volume control grounded. The back of the pot isn't ground. The sleeve of the output jack is. You need to measure from the back of the pot to the outside ring of the output jack and see if its a quot;shortquot;.

That yellow wire needs replacing as the bare section could touch a signal path point and cause a short.

Put some heat shrink on that coil-bridge wire as well.

Just to echo Artie's point, make sure that you have continuity between the earth terminal at the output, all pots and the bridge 'n' tailpiece.

I can't rule out that the pot might be faulty though.