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Lack of Ground Wire Significantly Changes PUP Tone?!

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  • Lack of Ground Wire Significantly Changes PUP Tone?!

    Ever experience this? This is all for a 7 string. I put a hotrails minihumbucker in the bridge of my 7 string, and standard SD Strat in the middle and a JB Jr in the neck. The SD wiring diagram for this doesn't show a ground between the pots, so I didn't do that. I wired this to split the coils.

    My assessment that follow is based on recording the dry signal and using Helix Native to compare tones and volumes so I'm not imagining this!

    For the bridge, when splitting the coil, the single coil sounded almost exactly like the neck pup in terms of tone, incl the same volume level. When splitting the neck coil, there was no difference in sound or vol so that didn't seem to be working.

    After adding the ground, everything works as expected, with the caveat that when the coils are split, the volume is nearly the same as for the full mini humbucker sound.

    Does this make sense, that a missing ground can have that level of effect on the tone? Of course I had a hum, as expected, which the ground fixed.

    Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this!

  • #2
    Re: Lack of Ground Wire Significantly Changes PUP Tone?!

    I think you are saying that when you were wiring things incorrectly, things didn't work, and now you added the ground wires, everything does work just fine. With the ground there, you were actually cutting one of the coils out when you split it.
    Administrator of the SDUGF

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    • #3
      Re: Lack of Ground Wire Significantly Changes PUP Tone?!

      Thanks for the reply. Everything was initially wired correctly except I did not have a ground between the pots. Without the ground, it sounds like I hear the neck pup when splitting the bridge minihumbucker. Does that sound possible? Thanks.

      Originally posted by Mincer View Post
      I think you are saying that when you were wiring things incorrectly, things didn't work, and now you added the ground wires, everything does work just fine. With the ground there, you were actually cutting one of the coils out when you split it.

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      • #4
        Re: Lack of Ground Wire Significantly Changes PUP Tone?!

        Did you test what coils were active by tapping on the poles with a screwdriver? My guess is that you weren't actually splitting the bridge pickup when you thought you were, but a test would confirm or disprove that.
        Administrator of the SDUGF

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        • #5
          Re: Lack of Ground Wire Significantly Changes PUP Tone?!

          That was an obvious rookie mistake! I did not. I'll put that in my notes for next time. Thanks.


          Originally posted by Mincer View Post
          Did you test what coils were active by tapping on the poles with a screwdriver? My guess is that you weren't actually splitting the bridge pickup when you thought you were, but a test would confirm or disprove that.

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          • #6
            Re: Lack of Ground Wire Significantly Changes PUP Tone?!

            The ground is absolutely necessary, especially for the split to work. Some of the diagrams don't show all of the grounding, probably because it is "understood/common knowledge". Don't let that ever mislead or confuse you. Just keep in mind that no matter what, everything needs to be grounded to each other.
            Originally Posted by IanBallard
            Rule of thumb... the more pot you have, the better your tone.

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