Official Luthiers Forum!

Good morning everyone-I'm a new guy to the forum tho I'm an old codger'
77 yrs old & counting...been making custom knives since I retired, but I'm
suffering from burnout on it.Started acquiring cheap electrics and rebuilding
them.I do not have a roomfull of expensive guitars, tho I have been playing
for about 60 yrs.My question is can I ground every thing to the output jack?
my soldering pencil only has 25 watts.Don't think I can ground to the pots.
thanks for any helpful advice, Tom

You should ground your output jack to everything else. Most of the time people will select one point to be their master ground and bring everything to it. That can be one pot, a lug or terminal strip. The back of a pot is a convenient place - often you want one lug grounded so you just bend it to the case and solder it, often the shield of a pickup wire is grounded to the pot when the "hot" is connected to a lug. The reason I probably wouldn't use the jack is that frequently it hides somewhere where its hard to get at.

A 25 watt soldering pencil should be hot enough to solder to pot cases - that is what I use. Its kind of a three handed operation - I'll hold a wire against the pot with the tip of the iron in my right hand and when its hot enough feed the solder in with my left. Then when I have a nice shiny puddle I lay the solder down and pick up a screwdriver which I'll use to hold the wire down, then take the pencil away and let it cool. If you don't hold it down frequently the wire will spring back and you'll get a cold solder joint.

Atttached is a typical LP style wiring showing the ground between all the pots and various wires laying down on them. I usually do the wiring outside the guitar one some sort of little template. And a tele style wiring with the volume pot being the common ground point. The white wire will be the bridge/string ground, the braded wire goes to the output jack.

ps - before I forget my manners, welcome to OLF and lutherie. I happen to be 74 (and sometimes loose count) - its interesting how this hobby seems to appeal to us old farts.

+1 on us old farts... my lifelong hobby has become a very nice business for me since I have retired from my day job. Now I'm enjoying life more than ever, doing what I've liked best all my life... making guitars play their best!


Pierre Castonguay

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Pierre Castonguay

thanks for the pics, Freeman...that
looks clean-mine looks like a birds nest!
nice idea on the template,too.
Pierre, I used to run long haul, made many trips to Quebec,Alberta,Sask,Alaska..back when the
oil booms were on.Beautiful country...

It’s a good idea to ground the cases of the pots to minimize possible noise.
If you cannot solder to the back of pots, you can put a piece of conducting foil tape over the pot holes in the body cavity, peirce the tape and intstall pots. Run a ground wire from the tape to a ground connection. Make sure the lugs on the shaft side of the pots do not contact the foil. I run a piece of electrical tape across the lugs.

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

This is what Dan is talking about. The foil is available from StewMac and others, I use it on almost any guitar with a non humbucking pickup. Put it in the control and pickup cavities, it will take solder so you can run a bit between pieces (you can see that in the bottom of the cavity). I like to run a bit over the top of the guitar where the screws hold down metal parts, in this case the control cover - they way everything gets grounded. As Dan says, be careful that live parts don't come in contact with the foil

Well, I got good news and bad news...good news is I got her all solderd up, even the pots!
Bad news is, I got a bad hum and pop...everything worked fine-pecked on the pu's tone changed like it \should, vol good, just gotta take it apart tomorrow and try again.I think I'll loosen the trem claw and strings
and lift the bridge out-save my strings that way.I ain't giving up..that ain't in my DNA.

Tom, one thing that has got me is that the lugs on the jack sometimes don't look right and its easy to switch the tip and the ring, and the results is that it works but hums badly. Don't ask how I know.

One thing is puzzling me...my son bought me an old peavy amp- bandit solo 65, its a great little 50 watt amp, has a ground switch by the on-off 2 position, pos or neg...I always use it on neg,never seen one before....

Got 'er done, my friends...one pot lug was touching something it shouldn't
and I had neglected to solder new ground to trem claw!..thanks so much, guys