Grounding

[eggman6]

I've rewired a gibson type guitar using this layout

www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/stockgibson.php

And i'm getting a buzzing that is remedied to an extent by touching the knobs (metal) or bridge (not strung it up yet).

Its even worse when i have my light turned on (dimmer switch) as expected, but my strat with standard single coils is much quieter.

With the humbucker guitar, everything is grounded to the back of one pot, including the bridge, and the pot cases are individually connected to this pot, rolling back the tone controlls removes much of this buzzing, in conjunction with touching the bridge/knobs or the ground removes it completely.

The only thing not soldered directly to the back of this main grounding pot is the ground tag of the neck volume that is grounded to its own case then to the same pot with all the other grounds soldered to it.

Any ideas?

[David Schwab]

Is the bridge grounded?

[bulldogguitars]

What about your ground on the input jack is it grounded as well

[eggman6]

The jack is indeed grounded, i also indicated in my post the bridge is grounded.

I'm just going to have to rip this apart and try again.

[eggman6]

Seems like no matter what i do i get this buzzing, what is it that touching the ground with my hand does, that being wired to the ground doesn't?

[Dave Kerr]

You're grounding your body by touching the bridge, it means that the bridge is properly grounded. Is this you?

[Jag]

Try a temporary jumper from the ground lug on the output jack to the bridge, a wire with alligator clips on each end will suffice. Does that help at all. It may be that the wire grounding your bridge is bad or the connection is failing for some other reason. 90% of the time, I find this to be the issue.

[eggman6]

Ok, i've rewired everything. With the tone knobs at zero, the guitar is silent. backing off the volume creates the buzzing again, probably when some of the singal is then shifted to the ground tag which is where the tone cap connects to (changed the layout again).

[eggman6]

I'm wondering if it could be the pickups, i noticed not all the polepeices seem to be grounded. Yet on my other guitar they all are.

[eggman6]

taken one of the humbuckers out of the guitar, wired it up to a jack, plugged into the amp, buzzes like crazy. Was most definately not my wiring. So a question out to all you pickup makers, any idea how i could possibly fix this issue.

[Plucky]

What brand of pickups are you using? Are they 4-conductors? Also, if you post a pic of the control cavity it might help.

[eggman6]

They are 4 conductor, but wired as two (other two wires soldered together and insulated), coil splitting is pretty pointless. Controll cavity photos wont help since they aren't in the guitar, but i bypassed everything to be sure and wired them directly to a jack with them out of the guitar so i could be sure it wasn't a wiring error. I tried many different wiring schemes, with and without tone controlls.

Not that brand should make much of a difference, but they're an old set of bill lawrence L-450 pickups, and i have the colour coded wiring diagrams.

[David Schwab]

Are you sure you have the 4 wired connected the right way? If you wire up a humbucker wrong it wont cancel hum. You have to have the two coils wired out of phase with each other.

What brand pickups are they? If you can tell which two wires go to each coil, try reversing one pair and see what happens.

I agree that splitting humbuckers is less than useful, but wiring them in parallel gets a brighter tone with no hum.

[edit] Oh, you said the brand. Try reversing two wires on one coil anyway. Those pickups shouldn't hum at all.

[eggman6]

I'll try that out, but i'm not actually getting any hum at all, its a buzzing sound.

[David Schwab]

I'll try that out, but i'm not actually getting any hum at all, its a buzzing sound.

Oh, the high pitched stuff? Do the pickup wired have a bare (shield wire)?