Best way to ground?

[Spider]

Hi there,

Sorry for such a basic question (and I have done quite a bit of research into this!) but does anyone have a best method to ground a guitar? I'm about to wire up my Warmoth strat and plan to take a ground wire from the back of the vol pot to the trem claw. Is it as simple as that, or does anyone have any other/better ideas? I'm also going to use an aluminum Callaham pickguard shield but I'll probably also shield the body cavities with copper shielding tape.

Have I missed anything?

Thanks for your help,

Spider

 

[dmraco]

yes.  bridge is a good place.

 

[tfarny]

"Grounding a guitar" means making sure all the things that need to be grounded eventually get to the "ground" (ring) tab on your output jack. Yes, you  can run a wire from your bridge to your volume pot's backside, as long as you have a connection from the volume pot's backside to the output jack. You could also just run every "-" wire directly to the output jack, same end result.

 

[disaster]

You want to be careful of ground loops.  The objective is to provide a single connection to the output jack "ground".  This is usually done by creating a "star" connection in the guitar.  There's usually a single ground connection from the jack to the Vol Pot case.  All ground connections within the guitar are connected to the Vol Pot case.  Each ground wire from the Pot case should only connect to a single point (bridge or trem claw, Tone Pot case, pickup ground, etc).  This creates the "star".  The connection from the Vol Pot to the pickup shield is achieved when the Pots are mounted through the pickguard & the nut tightened.

There are a couple of websites regarding guitar grounding that are helpful in this regard.  I can't remember any at the moment, but if you search on "guitar grounding" you'll find more than a few.  These will be helpful as your work progresses.

Good Luck

 

[Patrick from Davis]

The Claw will conduct to the springs, then to the bridge and then to the strings.  That should be fine.  The Aluminum shield will touch the Vol pot and should also be connected to the ground.  If you want to shield with copper foil it has to touch something that is grounded.  There should be a wire that is soldered to the back of all of the pots.  Making a star ground from the back of a pot can be problematic, because you can heat the pot up and fry the insides if you are not careful.  If you have copper tape, you can put a blob of solder there and use that for your star point.  All of these things require that the sleeve or ground from your cord makes a connection somehow to the communal ground.  The shielding won't work, the noise will be annoying and so on if the ground is not continuous throughout.  Use a continuity checker (on most multimeters the thing that makes noise) to check from the shield on a cord plugged into your guitar to all points inside to be sure the ground is continuous.  Then you should have as quiet as guitar as you are going to get.
Patrick

 

[The Norwegian Guy]

This is the best way to do it.
I had to make a drawing, so that it's easier to understand :icon_thumright:

 

[tubby.twins]

Nice drawing!  The bird was a nice touch.

I usually ground by taking an extra "locking washer" (the kind that comes with a busted volume pot) and using that as the base of a "star" grounding system.  About 8-10 wires can be soldered to each little section of the locking washer (between the teeth); each wire can then be connected to the pots, pickups, tone capacitor, cavity shielding, and bridge wire.

It may be overkill, but it's never failed me yet.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

I stink at soldering, but not at tinning.  Instead of grounding to the pot, I will put all the ground wires in a crimpable eyelet and tin it after crimping.  The solder is drawn down into the eyelet and effectively is soldered and crimped.  I then place it between the control plate and the pot.  The last three builds have been a Tele and (2) J-Basses with metal control plates.  I shared this in another forum and drew all kinds of crap, one reason I don't post pics of my wiring jobs anymore.  Everything from, "That's not what they're made for" to "What happens if the nut on the pot becomes loose, you have no ground."  The 1st one, that's not what they're made for.  They're actually made to carry a real voltage and enough amps to kill a man and don't have to be soldered, so this is actually overkill on my part.  The 2nd, life is full of what ifs.  What if I blow a tube, what if my battery dies, what if my cable goes out?  In all cases, have a spare.  The nut could loosen I suppose, but I know how to tighten things and have had solder joints break before.  Also, I'm not one to have a nut loosen up and then months later still have a loose nut.  This way I know works and I'm never in anydanger of overheating a pot.  I have 2 basses at every show, even if the other never comes out of the case.  Hell, I even take a spare bass head to every show.  FWIW, being prepared usually doesn't inspire others to be prepared, it teaches them to mooch off of you.  I've probably loaned out more batteries than I've ever used.

 

[Spider]

Thanks to everyone for their replies - and I loved the drawing too! Next time I do an outdoors gig...But it just shows that there are many opinions as to the best way forward. And I'm still a bit confused on this.

Okay, so here's what I've done. I've shielded the body cavities of my strat with copper tape and slightly overlapped the tape from each rout on to the face of the guitar - this should contact with the aluminum pickguard shield. The vol pot should also contact this shield. If I then run a ground wire from the back of the vol pot onto the trem claw, have I done enough, especially if I ground everything else (e.g. pickups) to the vol pot as well?  :icon_scratch:

Thanks again, Spider

 

[phred]

That should do it. If you have tone pots make sure you run a ground wire from them to the vol pot.

Scott

 

[Spider]

Thanks for your advice. So I guess you mean run a ground wire from the back of the tone pot (only one of them in my case) to the back of the vol pot? My pickups should arrive tomorrow so I'm going to start work on the wiring in the next day or so!

Thanks again,

Spider

 

[CrackedPepper]

I shared this in another forum and drew all kinds of crap, one reason I don't post pics of my wiring jobs anymore. 

tfarny posted a picture of something similar at my request - as a result I learned a new trick.  Please reconsider posting pics of how you did this with an eyelet. 

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

tfarny posted a picture of something similar at my request - as a result I learned a new trick.  Please reconsider posting pics of how you did this with an eyelet. 

Here's a limited pic.  The eyelet's I.D. is 3/8".  The green ground wire has been stripped, twisted, doubled up, crimped, then soldered.  Soldering consisted of heating the eyelet on the crimped area and it just draws the solder into the joint.  This step isn't necessary, as is none of this.  By placing the eyelet between the pot and the control plate, it grounds the plate and anything attached to it, like other pots and a switch.  These are not long shaft pots but because they are going through a thinner control plate and not a body's top, I back them up with a nut on both sides.  These are EMG 25K pots that came prewired.  You can see the factory solder job at the bottom from the pot's lug to the chassis, and also the black wire that I cut because not using the factory wiring diagram.  Again, I just do this because after close to 20 years of tinkering, I have never been able to solder wires to a pot's chassis.  The (unnecessarily oversized) green ground wire also catches the pickups' grounds and is terminated at the jack.  There is no ground wire to the bridge, as it isn't necessary with EMG systems.

 

[CrackedPepper]

I get it now - thanks!  I'll try anything to avoid dropping solder on the back of a pot. 

 

[zompocalypse]

dont ground the bridge electric shock keeps things interesting lol