Shielded Pickup Cable

[thedoctor]

Okay, so you got,say, a Tele and the shielded pickup cable is going to run through a portion of the body wood that is NOT shielded to the switch/pot cavity. Now, to avoid "ground loops" do you only hook up one end of the shielding on the pickup cable? I get a click when I hook the pickup end to the shielding in the pickup pocket but the background hum doesn't get worse or anything. With the covers loose, it's hard for me to get it close to a real source of annoyance, like a computer or flour. light. If I use the shielding of the pickup cable to ground the pickup cavity shielding, I get a ground loop, don't I?

[lovekraft]

If I understand you correctly, both the main cavity and the pickup rout are shielded and grounded, but there's a channel connecting the two that is unshielded - if that's the case, grounding either end of the shielded cable to the closest ground point should work without issues, while grounding both will set up a classic ground loop scenario. Keep in mind that if both paths in a ground loop are very similar in overall impedance, the noise it couples into the circuit will be minimal, and you may never hear it. It's just best to avoid the problem altogether.