The Steel Guitar Forum

I have a 1955 Fender Stringmaster double neck and and I am still having trouble adjusting the volume, and now the tone, of the two necks to equal out when switching from one neck to the other. At first, just the volume levels were not equal and I could not get them syncronized by adjusting the pickup height or the adjustment wheel under the bridge cover. Now, the tone of the lower neck sounds tinnier than the top neck and can't get any bass out of it. Could one of the pots have gone bad and how do I check it? And the adjustment wheel under the bridge cover, does this have a pot also? By the way, just what is the purpose of this wheel? Any suggestions?

Andy

Aloha Andy,

As I understand it, the blend control under the bridge cover dials in the second pickup. In other words one pickup is on at all times, with the blend control wheel bringing in the second pickup as well.

I would suspect a potenimeter first since it is less expensive to replace.

Ron

It’s likely that the neck pickup(closer to the fretboard) of the lower neck is not working. Try to tap lightly the top of the suspect pickup by tip of a screwdriver while the D8 is plugged into an amp with both necks on and the blend controls turned all the way to the right. If the pickup is good you hear a loud thump from the amp. Tap other pickups to compare the loudness. If you hear weaker or no thump from the pickup, it has a problem. Just my c2.
Jack Isomura
Yokohama, Japan

On the Stringmaster, we refer to the p/u's nearest the Bridges as The-Bridge-P/U and the ones nearest the Fretboard as The-Neck-P/U. It seems to me that you most likely have at least one weak Neck-P/U.

It does sound like an issue with a neck pickup. When I refinished my T8 I noticed that one neck was much denser than the other two. I think it makes a difference in the tone.

I had the same problem when I bought my Fender T-8. I used the screwdriver trick to sound out all the pickups and compare the sound. The bad one definitely sounded different. The outer neck had one bad pickup but I sent them both to Jason Lollar to check out. He rewound the bad one and said the other one was ok. It sounds awesome now and Jason is a good guy to boot.

In past years I've had 6-Trapizoid p/u's rewound by Jason and he does an outstanding job!