Grounding Problem

[killemall8]

i just wired up 2 guitarheads pickups. non active. 1 volume 1 tone, 3 way toggle, basicly jackson style. i grounded the bridge (tom) and i still get horrible sound when i toutch the strings. like so bad you cant hear the actual sound of the guitar. but only on overdrive. you can still hear it on a clean setting, but not as bad. this usually happens when i am missing a ground, but never this bad. what do you think is wrong?

[GregP]

Off the top of my head, it sounds like your bridge is being added into a ground loop instead of making it all the way to ground. Did you trace the path of the ground? I always star ground because I'm terrible at seeing if I'm creating a loop.

Greg

[killemall8]

Off the top of my head, it sounds like your bridge is being added into a ground loop instead of making it all the way to ground. Did you trace the path of the ground? I always star ground because I'm terrible at seeing if I'm creating a loop.

Greg

what do you mean "trace the ground"? i am using the method of having all grounds going to one wire, then the wire to the main ground. i dont think i created a loop, because they are all going to one wire.

[GregP]

Any chance of seeing a photo? In MOST cases, if you've got all your grounds going to the main wire, you're fine. I don't really truly understand how loops work, but I should up on it. There are many possibilities in a multi-wire circuit like a guitar circuit for loops to be created, even accidentally. Shielding material can present a few unexpected challenges. Are your pots or pickups in contact with shielding material? If you're using wires on the backs of your pots AND running a bunch of wires to one spot, and THEN going to the jack, plus if you used shielding material that your pots or wires are in contact with, there's a high likelihood that you've created a loop.

Alternatively, you simply have a couple of wires reversed somewhere. I once rewired an entire cavity (well, MOST of it...) but didn't check the output jack, thinking, "only two lugs... I'm sure I did it right!". Wrong. I had wired them in reverse. Switching them cured my problem.

If the output lug is definitely DEFINITELY wired correctly (I had to check several times before it finally clicked in... I'm not exactly a guru...) then it's possible you are creating too many pathways for the ground. When star grounding (having all grounds going to one wire) you have to keep everything absolutely discrete. The lug that normally goes to the back of the volume pot instead gets desoldered and sent to the "star" (the collection point for the grounds). The shielding material gets sent to the star from only ONE path, which can be one pot. Pot casings are not wired to one another if there is already shielding material in place creating conductivity between them. And so forth.

Greg

[killemall8]

Any chance of seeing a photo? In MOST cases, if you've got all your grounds going to the main wire, you're fine. I don't really truly understand how loops work, but it's something like-- the electrons decide that the path of least resistance is NOT in fact the ground lug of the jack, so they just kind of keep circulating in the circuit. I don't know if that's right, but that's how I always imagine it. It might be that the path of least resistance involves going back through a part of the circuit (such as the pickups themselves) before making it to ground. As I say, I don't completely understand it, which is something I should work on alleviating. <goes to :>

Now, if you're using the backs of your pots AND running a bunch of wires to one spot, and THEN going to the jack, plus if you used shielding material that your pots or wires are in contact with, there's a high likelihood that you've created a loop.

Alternatively, you simply have a couple of wires reversed somewhere. I once rewired an entire cavity (well, MOST of it...) but didn't check the output jack, thinking, "only two lugs... I'm sure I did it right!". Wrong. I had wired them in reverse. Switching them cured my problem.

If the output lug is definitely DEFINITELY wired correctly (I had to check several times before it finally clicked in... I'm not exactly a guru...) then it's possible you are creating too many pathways for the ground. When star grounding (having all grounds going to one wire) you have to keep everything absolutely discrete. The lug that normally goes to the back of the volume pot instead gets desoldered and sent to the "star" (the collection point for the grounds). The shielding material gets sent to the star from only ONE path, which can be one pot. Pot casings are not wired to one another if there is already shielding material in place creating conductivity between them. And so forth.

Greg

im sitting right here with it. i bet i did the ouput jack wrong. once my soldering iron heats up i will switch them. hopfully thats all it is. thanks greg

[killemall8]

you know its always a stupid simple thing. thanks for reminding me about that greg. it was the input. works great now.

[GregP]

Heh! You may have noticed I edited my post to be more succinct; however, ultimately it was just the seemingly "silly" (not so! important!) advice that worked. Glad to be of service.

[WezV]

i think we have all been there!!