Pickup Ground Wire, Not Grounded

[~davie]

I'm working on my own customized wiring scheme with a switch to get a series pickup option on a strat-style(3 singles) guitar. But a couple of pickup selections will cause the hot wire to be connected, but not their ground wires. Basically, I was just wondering what happens if a pickup's hot wire is connected, but its ground wire is not. Maybe it'll get extra noisy? I'm not sure, because I'm in the process of drawing the schematic, and I haven't done any "physical" wiring so far on this project.

Thanks.

[David Schwab]

You wont get any signal if only the hot wire is connected and not the common. Just a lot of hum.

[~davie]

You wont get any signal if only the hot wire is connected and not the common. Just a lot of hum.

you sure? and what is a 'common' ?

[David Schwab]

You wont get any signal if only the hot wire is connected and not the common. Just a lot of hum.

you sure? and what is a 'common' ?

You only have two wires on a single coil pickup. None of them are actually ground, or hot. But it's each end of the coil. One end has to connect to the "hot" and the other side is the "common" which must connect to ground.

If you do not connect the other end to ground, you are going to have an open circuit... it would be like having a very long piece of wire attached to your hot connection, and not going anywhere.

It's the same effect as disconnecting the ground from your jack. You have an open circuit, no sound from the strings, and it hums like crazy.

[~davie]

ah i see, thanks for the clarification