Arrrgggg! Wiring problems!

[stratocrusher]

I'm very frustrated right now. Today I worked on installing all new pickups and electronics into my old Yamaha Pacifica 112 (strat-style SSH). After finally getting it all wired up, I plugged it in (without putting strings back on yet) just to tap each pickup and make sure they were working. I'm getting very loud buzzing that gets louder if I touch the bridge or any of the pickups! The singles are noiseless, so I really shouldn't be getting any buzzing at all. Now, I'm guessing this is a grounding issue, but I have racked my brain and can't figure out how to fix it.

If anyone has any general ideas on what could be causing this or how to fix it, please let me know.

I'm also going to describe my wiring in more detail here to see if that helps. Again, this is an SSH setup with two noiseless single coils. I'm using a 5-way switch, 1 volume, and 1 tone control (both 500K pots). The way it was wired stock, the tone control affected all the pickups. I attempted to copy the stock wiring. On one side of the 5-way switch, connected to the 4 tabs from bottom to top are: a wire to a tab of the volume pot, hot wire neck, hot wire middle, hot wire bridge. That is all that is connected to the switch. The same tab of the volume pot that is connected to the switch is also connected to a tab of the tone pot. The middle tab of the tone pot has a capacitor which is connected to the back of the tone pot. The third tab of the tone pot is not connected to anything. There is a wire connecting the back of the tone pot to the back of the volume pot. The middle tab of the volume pot is wired to the output jack. The third tab of the volume pot is wired to the back of itself. Also on the back of the volume pot are the ground wires for the 3 pickups as well as the output jack ground wire. Finally the main ground wire (connected to the bridge, I assume....I didn't check the other end) is attached to the back of the volume pot.

Sorry for the long post. If anyone can see any problems with this wiring, let me know (although my attempt was to just copy the stock wiring, so I don't know how I could have messed up). Thanks in advance for your assistance.

 

[Artie]

Re: Arrrgggg! Wiring problems!

Strat; it sounds like you did everything correctly. :yell:

This is one of those situations where a meter comes in real handy. But here's a couple simple things to check. First of all, inspect your solder connections. You should know, how good of a solderer you are. Are they all shiny, and neat? Second, and this has bit me more than once, since pups tend to have a bare "ground" wire, its real easy for it to touch up against the wrong thing when putting everything back into the guitar.

If you have, or can get a meter, and you tell me what pups you have, I can tell you what resistance you should see coming in the output jack, with volume on zero and ten for each pup. (Oh yeah, and tell me what value the vol pot is.)

Hopefully, we can figure this out.

 

[Artie]

Re: Arrrgggg! Wiring problems!

I almost forgot, you say they are "noiseless". Are any of them 4-wire conductor? Did you remember to solder the red and white wires together and tape them off?

Just a thought.

 

[stratocrusher]

Re: Arrrgggg! Wiring problems!

Yeah, I have the extra wires soldered together and taped back. The bare wires come in contact with each other, but that shouldn't matter since they're all grounded, right? As long as they're not touching the switch or any connections that aren't meant to be grounded, I should be fine, right?

I'll check around to see if I have a meter, but I don't think that I do.