Tele ground wires. Too many?

[Mike M.]

I could use a bit of help here, folks. I'm in the process of putting some new pickups in my Tele (DiMarzio Area T's) and once again I'm trying to figure out if all of the ground wires grounded from the body in this guitar are truly necessary. Obviously the ground from the jack sleeve has to be grounded, but what about the rest? I have wired them up before but man, what a pain!

Theres one at the base of the neck pickup cavity.

Another in the base of the control cavity.

Two more from the base of the bridge pickup. I know the one that goes to the bottom of the pickup mounting plate is needed, but how about all of the rest.

Seems like a bit of overkill and extra soldering to me.

Plus, my eyes aren't the best either so if anyone can save me a bit of hassle it would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[doveman]

Re: Tele ground wires. Too many?

I just put Area '58s and '81s in a G&L Legacy. I think the Area T's are set up the same way ... GREEN to ground (back of the pot) and RED to switch. BLACK and WHITE are already hooked together. There was no shield ground on any of these Strat pickups.

What you are describing sounds like shielding on the Tele. If all the cavities have been covered with foil or paint, they should be grounded ... along with the bridge. If you leave the shielding ungrounded, it's like an antenna. However, all those grounds can be taken to the pot, as well. It will work even grounded through each other ... one to the next.

The pickups don't have to be grounded to each spot. I think that's what you're asking. If you had a picture it might help ... if I'm misunderstanding.

 

[Mike M.]

Re: Tele ground wires. Too many?

Thanks, Doveman. Well, I just went ahead and left two of the ground wires out. I left out the one from the neck cavity and the one from the control cavity. Works just fine, but I did jump a ground from one pot to the next. I was almost dreading wiring this thing up because of all those ground wires but it was much easier this time leaving the two out.

I know they're new but so far I'm digging on these Area T's! I've tried 3 other sets of pickups in this guitar and was about to give up until I tried these. Still got some tweaking but already I'm smiling big time. They're very lively, very full and very even sounding. Three qualities that were sorely lacking in the others I tried.

Hey, how do you like the Area 58's and 61 that you've got? I'm seriously considering giving those a shot next in my Strat.

 

[doveman]

Re: Tele ground wires. Too many?

Hey, how do you like the Area 58's and 61 that you've got? I'm seriously considering giving those a shot next in my Strat.

They seem to be working out. They were not the easiest pups for me to dial in though. They came in & out several times over the last few weeks. I finally got them dialed in ... if interested there are a couple of threads detailing the whole process with clips here. Search for Area 58 61 and you'll find them in the last couple of weeks.

I understand that most like the Area Ts straight out of the box.

 

[MikeS]

Re: Tele ground wires. Too many?

Hard to be certain without a pic, but it sounds simply like you've got wires connecting the cavity shields. You shouldn't need to touch them if you are only replacing pickups. By not grounding cavity shields you are only increasing the possibility of introducing noise to the circuit.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Tele ground wires. Too many?

If you don't play high gain even the outright loss of some shield grounding might be difficult to hear and/or attributed to the single coil's natural noisiness.

If you have pickups with separate wires to the baseplates you can usually ignore to ground it, again unless you play high gain.

In many case you also also find pickups that somebody messed with that already have the baseplate connected to one of the wires, then you actually have it grounded.

On the other hand, there is no advantage to be gained from not grounding. And there might be bad surprises if you move the guitar to an environment with high eletrostatic activity (such as most clubs with lighting, duh ). I strongly recommend to thoroughly ground everything.