My Wiring Aint Right.

[bucking hum]

Ok so I wired a guitar with some seymore duncan SH-6 pickups with 1 vol., 1 tone and a 3 way switch.

I followed this diagram Seymore Duncan Diagram

now the problem I have is when I plug in my guitar it just hums and whenever i touch the pickups or pots (without knobs) it just hums louder. without picking up much string vibration. (i intstalled just one string)

could this be a grounding problem? I've got both pickups ground to the back of the volume pot and the output jack ground to the spring holder thing.

any help?

[Southpa]

You haven't made a path to ground for all of your components. The "spring holder thing" I will assume to be a trem claw? in the back of the guitar?, then thats the only thing that is grounded. There must be a central point for the grounds of all your pickups, switches and pots. Connect the pickup ground wires, switch ground wire, output jack ground wire and tone pot ground wire to the volume pot casing. Basically, everything that has one of those black arrows is connected to your central gound point. Add the ground wire from the "spring holder thing" , just kidding to complete the ground circuit. The trem claw ground ensures that all metal parts connected to the trem claw, ie. springs, trem block, bridge, strings and tuners, are grounded. The volume pot is grounded to itself, the lug shown with the arrow is bent into contact with the casing and then soldered on.

Edited February 16, 2006 by Southpa

[bucking hum]

so i should disconnect the wire I have from the output jack to trem claw (spring holder thing haha) then solder it to the back of the volume pot, then add another wire to the volume pot and ground that to the trem claw?

and also add a wire to the tone pot ground and run it to the back of the tone pot?

also do all wires on the back of the volume pot have to be soldered to one point or can they be soldered seperately?

thanks

[Southpa]

so i should disconnect the wire I have from the output jack to trem claw (spring holder thing haha) then solder it to the back of the volume pot, then add another wire to the volume pot and ground that to the trem claw?

Yes. But its much easier to solder to lugs rather than flat pieces of metal so I would disconnect at the output jack lug and solder the trem to the vol. pot casing. Then add a wire between output jack ground lug and vol. pot.

and also add a wire to the tone pot ground and run it to the back of the tone pot?

The tone pot lug with the little arrow is bent into contact with the tone pot casing. The tone pot casing is then connected to the vol. pot casing with a ground wire.

also do all wires on the back of the volume pot have to be soldered to one point or can they be soldered seperately?

I know you wind up with a lot of wires in that area and it can be real fun trying to keep them all in one place. I usually solder them down in groups of two or three around the surface. It can be tricky. But either way it doesn't matter so long as the joints are solid and clean.

Edited February 16, 2006 by Southpa

[bucking hum]

ok so i did all that, and the noise went away. but now no sound grrrr. im gonna punch this guitar

[bucking hum]

this guitar totally works now

so I wired the pots backwards, wanna fight about it?

and my selector switch is backwards too but I can live with that for a while.

[Southpa]

Thats something I forgot to mention. When connecting my switch(es) I usually hook an ohmmeter from output jack lug to switch contacts and check for continuity. Just to make sure I get the right side the first time. But I'm glad its working for you.