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  • #20131
    Anonymous
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    Help !! I’ve got a one pickup Harmony Stratotone with a 3 way tone switch. Neither the switch or the tone knob works. I pulled out the wiring and found the blue wire to the tone knob disconnected. Where does the other end of the blue wire attach- on the 3 way switch? Anybody! can you help? PLease email me ASAP- I love this axe and want to hear the full tone spectrum of the Dearmond. Thanks.
    Piney Woods

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    • #81149
      Anonymous
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      : Help !! I’ve got a one pickup Harmony Stratotone with a 3 way tone switch. Neither the switch or the tone knob works. I pulled out the wiring and found the blue wire to the tone knob disconnected. Where does the other end of the blue wire attach- on the 3 way switch? Anybody! can you help? PLease email me ASAP- I love this axe and want to hear the full tone spectrum of the Dearmond. Thanks. : Piney Woods I have the two pickup model. I had to fix wiring on the treble pickup and work on the tone control. First look at the switch and there should be evidence of the missing wire being connected, use a magnifying glass if you have to, there will be something to show for how it broke off. The problem on mine was where there are two reostats or potentiometers per control, one was shot, and I bypassed it. It was shorting out the pickup gain, and I looked at it and figured out how to bypass it (don’t remember if it was adding a wire or cutting one). This pot was there to lower volume when tone was full and raise volume when tone was cut, who needs that. The one that controls tone has the capacitor attached to it, that you keep. You can try out connections with alligator clip wires, and with the guitar apart i monitor the circuit to hear what works, use something to give a magnetic signal (headphone or earphone) on top of the pickup, play music through that, it will make a nice music signal to hear the tone , and hook up to some inputs (i use input mic jacks on a cassette deck and listen to headphones) to see what works. I added vinyl magnetic sheet used for refrigerator magnets under the treble pickup to increase gain and tone, I noticed working on it it seemed to have lost magnetism compared to the other pickup. I also found the ground connection using the outside shield wire of the signal cable had come unsoldered from the side of the tone pot and I had to add a wire to make the strings grounded, I used the saddle mounting point screw as the connection to go from inside out to the saddle and this made a huge difference in reducing hum. Other tips: I just had Subway Guitars in Berkeley California (look on the web) work on mine, Fat Dog the owner can set you up with individual tuning gears and an adjustable rickenbacker mini width floating metal bridge, I just got this yesterday, it is now in tune and has more sustain, the wooden original bridge had a more retro sound, but i couldn’t keep it because i need to have my guitars with acurate intonation, the curse of perfect pitch. I suppose now I can cut the wood one to match the setup I have found on the adjustments. Finally, I bypassed resistors in the pickup leads to increase the signal. This did mess up the impedance for direct input to a mixer, but it sounds better in the amp to me. Those resistors only cut the signal a little but cut the brightness. Good luck, and try Subway for parts.

    • #111673
      Anonymous
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      : Help !! I’ve got a one pickup Harmony Stratotone with a 3 way tone switch. Neither the switch or the tone knob works. I pulled out the wiring and found the blue wire to the tone knob disconnected. Where does the other end of the blue wire attach- on the 3 way switch? Anybody! can you help? PLease email me ASAP- I love this axe and want to hear the full tone spectrum of the Dearmond. Thanks. : Piney Woods Have you found your answer yet? If not, i will have a look at my 1962 model. Do you know of any site that could help with the knobs themselves and what they look like? Marc

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