Les Paul Wiring: Grounding

[fretburner]

While I was doing a pickup swap on my Gibson LP Studio, I broke the wire from the bridge(?) grounded to the pot... or at least that's what I thought I brought. The guitar is not squealing (so far) but how easy is to to redo the wire ground to the bridge? Do I just pull out the bridge and look for a wire?

Here's a picture I grabbed from the mylespaul forum, and that solid wire soldered onto the neck volume pot is what I broke.

 

[jake_xms3_punk]

Re: Les Paul Wiring: Grounding

Yup that's the bridge ground wire. You can't just take the bridge off and look for a wire, you'd need to take the whole plug thing out which I wouldn't recommend. Can you not just attatch a length of wire to it in the cavity?

 

[fretburner]

Re: Les Paul Wiring: Grounding

Hmmmm... that's a good idea. It doesn't really need a soldered connection right? For as long as I have metal to metal contact, and it wouldn't come off while gigging, then I should be fine?

 

[fretburner]

Re: Les Paul Wiring: Grounding

I just tried the method above, and it seems like the grounding to the TOM is okay...

What I'm noticing now is that there's a hum but it goes away when I touch the pickup mounting screw, and ONLY when I touch any of the 4 pup mounting screws.

When I touch the TOM or tailpiece or strings, the hum does NOT go away. But when I touch the pickup mounting screws, the hum disappears.

What's up with that?

 

[1b4n3z]

Re: Les Paul Wiring: Grounding

Well the pickup mounting screw is connected to the pickup baseplate, so you're grounding the pickup by touching the screw. It therefore suggests that the bridge-pot connection indeed is broken.

 

[fretburner]

Re: Les Paul Wiring: Grounding

Gotcha. I'll try to rewire my pups again and see if there's any improvement.

 

[Ball&Chain]

Re: Les Paul Wiring: Grounding

Invest in a continuity tester. You can get them for a couple bucks at walmart. That would make it simple to see if the bridge is grounding or not.