string grounding issues with Tele "partsocaster"

[EmScott]

...made a Tele with a cast off StewMac Tele neck (a 1996 Godin one, not a Mighty Mite neck), and a 1994 Mexican Tele body...I had to mix a Fender neck pickup with a Duncan bridge pickup, whose magnets were apparently not both pointing north when oriented in the usual "anatomic position" in the Tele...

SO, I had to switch the bridge pickup's hot wire with the grounding wire, and wire the old "hot wire" to the brass bridgeplate, replacing the old "ground wire" where that ground wire had been soldered at the Seymour Duncan factory...

I DID thereby achieve the goal of having the two pickups play in phase..

HOWEVER, there's a lot of hiss unless I touch the strings, more than any other Tele I've made (and I've made maybe four by now, counting previous incarnations of this neck and this body...)

Any diagnosis now possible from these factoids ?? I suspect there's another layer of complexity to the standard wiring scheme's grounding concept that I don't yet understand...maybe I'll just have to get a magnet-polarity-compatible Seymour Duncan neck Tele pickup, eh ??

Thanks in advance for any information possible...FWIW I also have the scratchy/bangy Tele pickguard syndrome with this instrument, and I understand the best "workaround" for that is to put a sheet of fabric softener between the pickguard and the guitar body...any other ideas out there ??

[rspst14]

Re: string grounding issues with Tele "partsocaster"

Three things...first, I would suggest shielding the electronics cavity with copper foil or several good coats of shielding paint. Second, make sure you have a ground wire running from the bridge to your central ground point. And speaking of a central ground point, it's always a good idea to wire all of your ground connections to one point. This eliminates the possibility of a ground loop, which can be the cause of a humming problem.

Ryan

[Fresh_Start]

Re: string grounding issues with Tele "partsocaster"

Here's a web site with more info than you could possibly want on shielding & grounding electric guitars: http://www.guitarnuts.com/index.php

The simplest thing to do would be to find out if your bridge/strings are grounded. Just use your multimeter with one lead on the strings and the other on the inside lip of the jack. If there's no connection, I think the "standard" solution is to fan out the stripped end of a wire between the body and the underside of the bridge and connect the other end of that wire to a ground point.

Hope this helps.

Chip

[BS123]

Re: string grounding issues with Tele "partsocaster"

make sure you have a ground wire running from the bridge to your central ground point.

Yes, this needs to be addressed....

[Curly]

Re: string grounding issues with Tele "partsocaster"

yes, the ground wire to the bridge was the first thing to cross my mind ...
my teles have a hole running from the bridge pickup rout up to the underside of the bridge. My Fender tele had a wire running up there with the end bared, so that the bridge pressed against it, creating a ground.