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Posted

I wired my guitar yesterday, according to this diagram. However, I'm experiencing horrible amounts of hum.

The hum increases a bit in volume when I touch anything that's connected to ground (strings, bridge, etc.). The hum can be reduced by turning the tone pot to reduce the higher frequencies, and when I turn down the volume (any of the 2 pots), the hum gets a lot bassier below a certain point.

How would I go about checking the wiring? What should I look for?

Posted

sounds like a ground problem...check all the ground wires on the back of the pot and you might also check something else.sometimes if your cavities are sheilded and not grounded they will produce noise.if your cavitiesare sheilded ground them

Posted

Did you run a ground wire from the bridge to the ground point? If not I'd start there and also check all of your ground solder points. It won't hurt to reheat them with your soldering iron and make sure they're all making good contact. Just because a solder joint looks good doesn't mean it is. I had a similar problem on a bass and all it took was remelting the solder on the back of the pots (ground).

Posted
Sounds like you've either got a ground loop, or a pickup wired in reverse - go here for everything you ever wanted to know about guitar wiring and shielding.

sorry im getting off topic, but i was wondering if you know when or if those forums will ever be up again??

Posted

Look at your grounding circuit as an entirely separate system from all your "hot" wires. You can't have any loops, that is, a ground wire coming from a component and then attached to a ground point and then a ground wire going back to that component from somewhere else. I set up my grounding circuits similar to a river system with tributaries running into it with the end result going to the ground lug of your output (plugin) jack.

Choose an area to use as a central hub, usually one of the volume pots, for pickup selector switch and bridge. Your bridge must be grounded with a separate wire pushed into a bridge post mounting hole then soldered to a volume pot. Pickup grounds soldered to their respective volume pots. Pickup selector switch ground wire soldered to your central hub. The most important part is bridging all your pots in series. I usually take a longer piece of wire and strip insulation off at intervals and then solder those bare sections to each pot so I have a continuous run. Finally, a wire running from the last pot to your output jack ground lug. Also I bend in and solder the third lug of each pot (ie. 3rd one going counterclockwise) to its casing. Thats about it. Since you are using humbuckers there is no need to use any shielding tape or paint in cavities like you would with single coil pickups.

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