Sometimes wiring in new PUPS frustrate me!! (I'm stuck please help)

[B Bent]

Here's the scoop: I put a SD SM-1 in the neck of my B Bender and another SD APTL-1 in the bridge. It's a Nashville Tele so it's got a Strat PUP in the middle with a 5 way switch. I have it wired according to this diagram. However I had to reverse the polarity of the neck pup and the bridge pup in order to get the correct phasing with the middle pup. So basically all 3 blacks and all 3 yellows are reversed. (yellow grounded and blacks hot to the switch.) This works and gives all of the correct 5 positions. The only thing is that any position that involves the bridge pup being engaged( which is 3 of 5) produces a terrible noise. I guess it's a grounding issue. I have looked for bad joints and double checked the grounding, but it still has the terrible hum. The neck pup is fine when it's engaged. Any ideas?


PS I can touch the side of the 5 way switch and the hum goes away.

 

[Artie]

Re: Sometimes wiring in new PUPS frustrate me!! (I'm stuck please help)

I'm grasping at straws here, but wouldn't the SM-1 have its cover grounded? And does the APTL-1 have a baseplate thats grounded? (Ergo, those points are now "hot".) As a starting point, I'd put the neck and bridge back to "normal" and reverse the middle pup instead.

Artie

 

[octavedoctor]

Re: Sometimes wiring in new PUPS frustrate me!! (I'm stuck please help)

That was the first thing that occurred to me.

Why did you opt to swap the polarity of the two outer pickups instead of just swapping the polarity of the strat pickup in the middle? As the strat pickup doesn't have any cover or baseplate to be grounded it doesn't make much difference which way round it goes.

Well, it does, but it's not mission critical...

 

[B Bent]

Re: Sometimes wiring in new PUPS frustrate me!! (I'm stuck please help)

I am an amature PUP wirer is why I didnt think to do that. It's fixed now thanks to Artie!!!

 

[Artie]

Re: Sometimes wiring in new PUPS frustrate me!! (I'm stuck please help)

Cool. I wish they were all this easy.

Now . . . tell us how it sounds.

Artie