T486 troubleshooting

[shylayers]

Hi everyone, 
I am the proud new owner of a T486, the standard red model. Looks and plays great, but it seems like the pickup wiring is a bit funky.  I'm trying to figure out what might be going on with the wiring, and where to begin. Here's what happening:

Bridge Pickup selected: Both volume knobs and tone knobs control the sound (!). Lowering either volume knob takes the sound down all the way. 
Both pickups selected: Same behavior as bridge pickup selected. 
Neck pickup selected: Works as you'd expect. 

I did notice a blob of solder on one of the wires, although both pickups do seem to be working. It leads me to believe the problem may be at the toggle switch?  But I thought I'd ask the opinions of the good people here, and how you might go about troubleshooting this.  I'm pretty good with soldering, but how much of a pain is it to yank the electronics?

[Lukew]

It is a pain.  I have done it several times on an Epiphone Dot, but never on one of my Eastman guitars.  There are other threads in here that deal with this, but the pots won't fit through the F holes on Eastman guitars.  You have to remove one of the pickups - the bridge pick up I think - and you can remove the pots through a gap beside the pickup cavity.

If you do have a go, make sure you tie string or fishing line to the pot spindles before you extract them, do you can pull them back in again.  You also might have to loosen the input jack and switch to be able to remove the pots.  It is a good idea to tie string them too. 

Get yourself a little dentist's mirror to see if you can spot the problem before you go to the trouble.

To be honest, I would go to the retailer you purchased it from.  It sounds like a warranty issue to me and that might be the path of least grief.

[DaddyG]

I have a problem with bridge pickup output on my T486.
A neck pickup adjustment screw came out, so I had to remove the pickup to reset the screw. I replaced the strings with NYXL's in the process. Now, the Bridge pickup output seems low (about 1/2) compared to the neck. The neck pickup height is about the same as it was and the bridge was not touched. Bridge resistance at max volume is 8 k ohms and the Neck is 7.6 k.

Any ideas before I start removing pickups / Pots / switch for inspection?

Tnx,
AjG