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Hey everyone, I have this Wilson Bros' guitar and the input has been having a lot of trouble every since I got it. Basically half the time it works, half the time its totally unresponsive. I've opened the pick-guard once or twice to make sure the wires are soldered to the input, and a few times they have come loose. My real problem though is that I probably need to re-wire the area near the input entirely, but I can not get the entire pick-guard detached from the guitar. Here is a photo of it below. The bridge sits on top of the pick-guard, and can be detached but there are two metal circles over the pick-guard, where the screws for the bridge go in, that I can not figure out how to detach. My problem is basically that I can't really get a good look, or angle of attack, to try to fix it. Has anyone else run into something like this? I would basically have to un-string it, remove the bridge, and then try to figure out to get the pick-guard totally detached so that I can work on it. Just worried about the neck if I relieve all the pressure. Would it be better for me to bring it to someone who does this kind of thing for a living?

If what you are explaining is what I think it is, I put a small steel dowel in the hole, and screw thye post into the hole that in effect allows the stud to be pulled from the body. Be careful as you are putting the pressure on the back side of the body of the guitar.
BTW, it's the output of the guitar, not input.
Dan

Thanks and sorry about the poor lingo.

There are a couple of ways to deal with your problem. As you already figured out, one would be to remove the strings (or at least loosen them), remove the bridge and remove the pick guard. A second would be to loosen the screws from the bottom area of the pick guard and lift up the guard and work with it still attached to the body. Another way would be to remove the two pots and the jack from the pick guard and repair the wiring out of the guitar and when the wiring was finished, remount the pots and the jack.

Loosening the strings on the guitar should not cause any problems with the neck. Flexing up the pick guard and working under it can work, but it can be difficult to do a good job of soldering working this way. If you remove the pots or even just the jack, the attached wires will probably be long enough to make soldering a bit easier outside of the body.

Mr. Bill wrote:There are a couple of ways to deal with your problem. As you already figured out, one would be to remove the strings (or at least loosen them), remove the bridge and remove the pick guard. A second would be to loosen the screws from the bottom area of the pick guard and lift up the guard and work with it still attached to the body. Another way would be to remove the two pots and the jack from the pick guard and repair the wiring out of the guitar and when the wiring was finished, remount the pots and the jack.

Loosening the strings on the guitar should not cause any problems with the neck. Flexing up the pick guard and working under it can work, but it can be difficult to do a good job of soldering working this way. If you remove the pots or even just the jack, the attached wires will probably be long enough to make soldering a bit easier outside of the body.

Yeah I've done several attempted repairs just by lifting up what I could and working under it, sometimes it did the job, but now the thing does not want to play at all. I can plug in the guitar, this was occurring prior to my original post and not something that just came up now, and I just get feedback with no sound from the guitar(everything is turned up on the guitar). If I put some pressure on the cable at the output, the fuzz will stop and I can hear the guitar working in the amp.

I guess before I go forward, is this something which I can feasibly do myself or do I need to get a guitar tech to check it out?

Thanks a ton to everyone who has helped me out so far as well.

Putting pressure on the plug is either causing something that is not connected to connect or something that is touching (shorting out) to disconnect. Either way you need to open it up again to fix it.

It might be something really simple like a bad ground connection or it could be something harder to find like an intermittent pot or jack. Soldering skills are learned with practice, the more you do the better you get at it. You know what your skill set is, is this something that you can fix?

If you do try and fix it, take your time and have patience. Analyze the problem and then look for the solution. If the guitar buzzes or makes humming noise when it is not working, it would lead me to think that the ground on the jack is not connected. If the guitar makes no sound at all when it isn't working, it would lead me to believe that the signal output is shorted to ground at some point.

Once you find the problem, carefully resolder the bad connection or insulate/move the shorted wires.

Well I opened it up last night. I cleaned up the connections at the output and made sure that they were in the right spots. They had previously come undone at one time so I wondered if maybe I had soldered them on to the wrong connections previously. I was still getting that buzzing. A friend of mine had stopped by prior to me starting and was helping me out. He suggested that maybe the output was dirty. We got a shot of vodka and some cotton swabs and cleaned the inside of the output, screwed the pick-guard back on, made sure it was all dry, and then plugged in. Its playing fine now so I guess that fixed it.

You drink shots with cotton swabs? ;>)
Jim