Grounding guitar wiring

Painting? Routing? Set-up tips? Or just straight-up making a guitar from scratch? Post here, and post pics!

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Rhysyrhys
The Kraken
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Grounding guitar wiring

Post by Rhysyrhys »

Hi all, made this a separate thread for visibility - is related to the Jazzmaster project I've got running but separate enough I think.

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Harness:

http://www.guitarfetish.com/Kwikplug-P ... 26942.html

Pickups:

http://www.guitarfetish.com/KP--Vintag ... 21867.html

http://www.guitarfetish.com/Crunchy-Pa ... 21737.html

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I got one of these harnesses and it comes with no instructions. I'm at least clever enough to figure out how to fit it to my pickups and guard, BUT it comes with a grounding wire and a splicing crimp clamp to connect it to a ground wire that is already there.

In the body of the guitar I have:

1) a hole leading to the trem cavity, with no wire in it (I possibly ripped this wire out when I gutted the guitar a while back, can't remember).
2) a screw hole in the control cavity, a tiny screw that fits onto it and a spade crimp with some wire hanging off of it that goes with the screw for grounding.

My question is: I have only one ground wire on this pre-wired harness, where does it ground to? Control cavity, or trem cavity?

Follow up question, if I don't have a wire leading from my tremolo cavity is that a problem?

Follow up, follow up question, is there anything else I should be aware of when wiring up two humbuckers like this?



Thank you in advance Shortscale!
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dots
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Re: Grounding guitar wiring

Post by dots »

my experience is you need it to ground it to the bridge/trem so you will effectively become the ground when playing. i ran into this with the toronado i got a few years ago with a ground wire that doesn't seem to be touch the post as it should be.

someone working on the guitar before i owned it drilled in three additional screws in the pickup routes and control cavity and ran wire from the grounds of pots to those screws to make up for that. it, of course, did fuck-all as the guitar was noisy af.

for right now, i have wire connecting the screw from the output jack to the bridge. no more ground buzz. at some point i'll try getting at the bridge post through hole already drilled like it should be.
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Thom
lamp
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Re: Grounding guitar wiring

Post by Thom »

If you’ve shielded your control cavity with copper tape or conductive paint then I would run both the harness and a wire from the trem to the control cavity spade. If you haven’t shielded it then just the wire from the trem to the harness.