Grounding TOM

[NQbass7]

So hypothetically... if, say, my friend had forgotten to put in a grounding wire before putting in the TOM studs... how would I - er, my friend - go about fixing that oversight?

I'm wondering if... he can use the soldering iron to heat the studs and put a tinned wire through the hole and get it to stick that way... any thoughts?

First step of assembly and I'm he's already screwing things up.

 

[Dan025]

you, err your friend may want pull one of the studs with a rubber washer (to protect the finish), the appropriate sized bolt, and a metal tube or socket with an i.d that fits over the outside of the stud bushing.  i hope you, uhm, your friend didn't glue it in.

or you, i mean "he" can use this as an excuse to go buy EMG pickups...

 

[drewfx]

This sounds like a case where something I heard about on talkbass called "Wire Glue" might actually be worth trying for a few dollars.

 

[Cagey]

So hypothetically... if, say, my friend had forgotten to put in a grounding wire before putting in the TOM studs... how would I - er, my friend - go about fixing that oversight?

I'm wondering if... he can use the soldering iron to heat the studs and put a tinned wire through the hole and get it to stick that way... any thoughts?

You'll never get it hot enough, and even if you could it's unlikely solder would stick to it. You're going to have to bite the bullet and pull the stud, then install the ground wire properly.

It's not the nightmare it sounds like. Do it like Dano says, and you'll be fine.

 

[Cagey]

This sounds like a case where something I heard about on talkbass called "Wire Glue" might actually be worth trying for a few dollars.

That stuff has been around for years and is less than worthless. It has no structural integrity and creates high-resistance joints. The only thing it's good for is making money off suckers.

 

[drewfx]

This sounds like a case where something I heard about on talkbass called "Wire Glue" might actually be worth trying for a few dollars.

That stuff has been around for years and is less than worthless. It has no structural integrity and creates high-resistance joints. The only thing it's good for is making money off suckers.

Are you implying the higher resistance would be a problem when just grounding the bridge? I'm actually thinking this might be the only sort of application where that stuff could be useful.

 

[Cagey]

I'm not implying; I'm saying it right out loud. The signals in a guitar/bass are very small and the input sensitivity of amps/effects is very high. Any resistance is a Bad Thing.

 

[NQbass7]

So I finally got a free weekend, and seeing as my neck should be returning from Cagey-ville in a little over a week, finally got down to business. I ended up trying the washer/tube/bolt version, and got it a little ways... and then realized that the washer wasn't quite wide enough in the center. Doh. But I tried just removing everything, sticking the bolt down in there and cranking, and that pulled it right out once the bolt bottomed out. Hopefully that's not a harmful way to do things - seemed pretty efficient, actually.

Anyway, got the bushing out, slid the ground wire through and taped it inside the cavity to hold it in place, used a rubber mallet to get the bushing back in... and the ground wire came right out. Wasn't stuck in there at all. So I took the bushing back out, gave it one more shot and this time was able to tuck the ground wire between the bushing and the wood as I pushed it in. (I had attempted that the first time, but couldn't get the bushing in at all with the wire next to it. This time I found the right spot for the wire, I guess  :dontknow

In other words, problem solved. Now onto other issues... like how to make sure these pickup mounting rings are centered. (I gotta say... for ease of assembly, the telecaster wins this one. Attaching the electronics to a pickguard/control cover and then just screwing those down was pretty nice.)

 

[Jumble Jumble]

What I did was to put some scrap wire on the guitar to show where the strings would go -- you know the neck is right and the bridge is right, because W did the drilling -- and then use those wires as a guide to get the pickups lined up nicely.