The British Steelies Society

Hi , I'm new to the forum and lap steel. I recently got my 1st lap steel and the tone control isn't working. A friend of mine with experience of working on his own electric guitars is going to help me try and fix it. As you can see in the photos the wire from what i think is a capacitor (yellow wire) isn't attached to the pot. I was hoping someone may be able to help. He has something to test the parts before we re solder them. Would anybody know what readings we should be getting on the pots , the pickup (1954 P13) , and the yellow capacitor? The volume pot is a bit crackly but the pickup is working.
I couldn't see any markings on the pots but tried to photograph the yellow capacitor markings.
Thanks , I would really appreciate it if anybody was able to help

There's a good chance the capacitor is kaput, it doesn't look too healthy but appearances can be deceptive. Have you tried soldering it back onto the lug on the volume pot to see if it works. Essentially the way it is wired is the way it's supposed to be, so if you solder the cap back onto the lug and the tone control doesn't work then either the capacitor or the tone pot are faulty, my money would be on the cap.

You say that the volume pot is scratchy, to be expected on something of this vintage. You could try cleaning the pot by spraying some cleaner into the internal of the pot through the gap at the lugs and then rotate the pot a few times to clean out any muck. This spray works well for this purpose,

https://www.guitar.co.uk/kontakt-super-10-switch-and-contact-cleaning-lubricant

If it's still scratchy then the pot will need to be replaced, chances are the tone pot will be in a similar condition so worth cleaning it. Again if that proves to be scratchy then it'll need to be replaced.

If the cap is a dud, then that too will need replaced. It looks like an PIO (paper in oil) capacitor which are hard to come by these days but they are available, just a bit pricey. There are also a lot of PIO fakes on the market, so you have to be careful. Alternatively a different type of cap will work just as well, orange drop caps are very popular for guitar tone controls and probably just as good as PIO.

Here is an article with a bit info on caps,

https://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/latest-updates/what-tone-capacitors-do-i-need-for-my-guitar

Hopefully your friend will be able to help you with this.

Thankyou Jif for your reply, that is all great info. I'll read through it all later , really appreciate it

Hi Jif , I've read through everything. I've ordered some servisol / kontact super 10 and the 1st thing we will do is try and re solder the capacitor. If this doesn't work I'll have to work out what pots will work best with the P13 and which capacitor will work best too. Hopefully it will be an easy fix. I've found a guitar parts supplier which stocks everything if needs be. I'm going to try and do it on saturday , thanks from Mike

Hi Mike, glad it was of some help. If you have to replace the pots, best try and replace them with the same values and type as the originals, for example 250k logarithmic. Hopefully the values will be on the original pots.

Cheers Geoff

Hi , I took off the pots and cleaned them with Kontakt chemie super 10 and soldered the old capacitor back on. Everything is working with no noise on the pots. So I'm just leaving everything as it is and enjoying playing it
Thanks

That's good news Mike. Means you can keep the guitar all original