newbie needs help

[toaophil]

hey all, i've come for help...

i'm an experienced player... but a complete newbie with guitar / pic up wiring...

heres the problem/ situation... I've put (on a guitar i'm building) 3 single coil pickups with a 5 way switch. standard strat stlye.

Each pick up - one wire to the selector switch - and the other wire to the volume pot. (earth?)

The volume pot is connected to the selector switch and both tones and volume are linked.

The jack plug lead also connects to the volume pot. Somehow everything works - but - huge buzzing! Until i put my finger on the metal part where the jack plug connects (on the outside)


So i have an earth problem? also not sure what to do with the other earth wire that runs up from back of guitar?


Well you're prob thinking it sounds a mess... well it is sort of - but i must be missing something obvious?

Please help!


i've seen diagrams where each pickup is individually earthed - but to where?

[big_teee]

Compare your wiring to this diagram and make sure you have everything grounded like the diagram.
http://support.fender.com/service_di...1000C_SISD.pdf
Good Luck,
T

[rjb]

Compare your wiring to this diagram and make sure you have everything grounded like the diagram.
http://support.fender.com/service_di...1000C_SISD.pdf

And take special note of the "black wire to spring claw".

[toaophil]

And take special note of the "black wire to spring claw".

Spring claw?

[toaophil]

Also all the pick up and jack earth wire in the diagrams just shows it coming out to one side and thats it, dead end. Do they mean attach it to the body? When i took mine apart in the first place - all earth leads went to the volume pot.

[DrGonz78]

Did you do anything like copper tape in the inside cavities of the guitar? If you put extra shielding in the cavities of the guitar then you need to solder wires to ground the copper tape.

Well that might not be it...

Did you make sure there is a sufficient ground running to the bridge of guitar? Sometimes you need to scrape away coating on the bridge to get a sufficient grounding to the bridge. Also, almost impossible to solder something to a bridge if it is a newer metal type. I think they call it Ferrous type metal that is really good for bridges. Non-Ferrous metals are the bad one that are alloys and they coat them with all sorts of stuff too.

Ground every connection to something... You can never have too many grounds.

Also, watch out for coated strings as they sometimes can cause grounding issues if the metal strings don't reach a ground potential.

[big_teee]

Also all the pick up and jack earth wire in the diagrams just shows it coming out to one side and thats it, dead end. Do they mean attach it to the body? When i took mine apart in the first place - all earth leads went to the volume pot.

The fender diagram is for a Tremelo guitar.
The two ground wires in the diagram. one goes to the shield side of the jack.
the wire would go through the body and ground the tremelo springs, through the claw.
If you have a non tremelo guitar that wire would go to the Bridge assembly.
Here is a Seymour Duncan Diagram.
One wire is missing on this diagram.
It needs one more ground wire from the pot to the bridge to ground the strings.
Wiring Diagram