Thanks, Jaap! Interesting with the home cooked active PU house. Regarding the five way switch I think I'll stay with the original wiring since I like the out-of-phase a lot. Yes, the block design is excellent; I'm not even swearing here because I forgot two full knob packages that should be secured inside the house, I will take it off again and fix that in three minutes. Ha, ha... what a bummer standing here playing my Grand, now sounding hum- and buzzfree as when new three years ago, and when reaching for the knob to switch between in-phase and neck pickup my fingers stumble against cold metal instead of the good old fuzzy rubber knob... and in the same moment my eyes fell on the little pile of mechanic devices that should have been on the inside.

Latest news on this PASV-4 issue: I couldn't find the source of the earth/grounding issue. I got rid of the zipper noise when using the bass side volume pot but there is still low frequent hum when touching the pickup house. The pickup is unusable in this concision so I dismounted the PASV-4 from my SG-12 and put it into my Grand to make it playable again. Wow, what a sound! I'm so grateful for these marvelous instruments! I can't say which one that sounds best, the Grand or the Stick Guitar, they are both so very prolific in their own ways. I'm learning that I am not the only one having issues with almost new PASV-4 pickups, so maybe there was a batch of crappy components that went into a Villex production line?

If I had money I would love to buy a Stickup for variation. I know the Stickup is a bit thinner than the Villex but do the screw's positioning match?

The screws are not the same, and the support screws underneath aren't in the right spots either. But you can certainly add new holes. The module is not as thick, and the angle of the shape is more severe, so in the cases where I've seen people putting Stickups on instrument where the block was cut, Emmett made two small wooden blocks to fill in the gaps.

I think Glenn Poorman and Jim Meyer both have instrument like this...

THanks, Greg. Seems more complicated then I had hoped for. I still have one working PASV-4 so I think I will rather keep on moving that one between the Sticks. I can't afford to keep both my Sticks with fresh strings anyway so to me that solution means no extra trouble.

Per,
When you bypassed the faulty pot did you tie the pickup signal and the output wires together and leave the ground wire unattached? This would leave that pickup floating with respect to ground and could be the source of the hum. I removed the pots on my stickup (I use vol. pedals and like the clean look also), but I placed a 250K ohm resistor between the junction of the pickup signal/output wires and the ground wire, This preserves the circuit relationship as with the vol. pot full on. (the stickup uses 250K pots)I did this also because the pot resistance has an effect on the tonal character of the pickup, hence Gibson using 500k pots to brighten up the humbucker pickup and Fender using 250K pots on their single coil pickups. Since youre in the soldering mode give it a try, can't hurt.

Thanks Yesman, that's a good advice. I'll look into it. But the main problem here is that I have no clue to where the in the signal path the bad connection is located. This issue started before I tried to fix it and bypassing the most problematic volume pot did not change what seems to be a process of this PASV-4 losing earth grounding.

hi everyone - I would like to remove my PASV-4 as the adjusters on the pickups need fixing - does anyone have a link or doc as to how to remove it? thanks in advance.
Cheers, Garth

All you have to do is remove the two large phillips scews on the top of the module and it should slide right out. If you have old style with the selector knobs on top you will also need to loosen the strings.

Thank you Greg, that was easy. Two of the pick ups had separated from the adjustment plates so I had to re-glue them and clean things up while it was off. Cheers Garth.