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volume pot problem

Hey guys I am about finished with my CBG and have problem. I wired it up with a buzzer piezo plate and a used but working alpha B500K pot for volume but had no sound. I could tap on the piezo itself and get a little but not enough to play it. The pot came from an elcheapo estaban acoustic amp that I scraped a while ago so I know it was a good pot. I checked the amp out before I robbed the parts from it. I wired the cgb according to a standard schematic I found on here and nothing. Next I wired the piezo straight to the jack and it plays great....I'm confused...any suggestions

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Permalink Reply by Eric Kasten on October 23, 2014 at 3:00am

You have a photo or diagram of how it was wired?

Photo would be best....

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Lee dixon on October 23, 2014 at 3:03am

yep I used this one:

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Permalink Reply by Eric Kasten on October 23, 2014 at 3:11am

Yeah, that looks right. And you wired it exactly like that?

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Lee dixon on October 23, 2014 at 4:55am

yep I wired it like that....Ive wired a couple guitars in the past and thought I was good at it....lol... Maybe try to swap the wires on the pot next?

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Permalink Reply by Eric Kasten on October 23, 2014 at 5:23am

Try a different pot...?

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Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on October 23, 2014 at 10:26am

You need to go to the autopartsmart and get a $10 multimeter.
There are two possibilities as far as I can see--
1. (Most likely) the pot is fried/dirty. I suspect you'll find a much higher than advertised resistance across the pot wiper. Contact cleaner MAY help. But it may not.
2 there is a short (across from red to black) somewhere in your circuit. Remember the current will always follow the path of least resistance to ground...

A multimeter is essential if you want to build electric guitars, even more so (if possible) when you intend to reuse components from cheap scrap.. You can test that pot now rather than rely on that it is known to have worked at some time in the past. Good luck

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Permalink Reply by JL on October 24, 2014 at 12:58am

Rule #1, never assume.

Piezo wired directly to the jack sounding great => POT/POT_Wiring.

have a friend/spouse double check your wiring to the pot has the correct leads going to the correct spots and that you don't accidentally have a touch of solder slop shorting the POT connections.