Re: Tone Gurus Please Advise! Buzz issue. All info/pictures/diagram included.
I will experiment with this soon and report back. Bit of a hassle lugging the gear around but work the trouble if I find an answer.
By this do you mean unsolder the hot and ground wires coming from the output jack to the volume (removing them from the volume pot, leaving them on the output jack), and unsolder the signal wire for one pickup from the switch and the pickup ground wire from the volume pot case, then attach the pickup signal wire (black) directly to the hot output jack wire, and the pickup ground (green, and shield wire) directly to the output jack ground wire), by passing the volume pot, tone, pot, and switch all together? What about the bridge ground wire? Would that need to be grounded also so the strings are grounded? Sorry i've never heard of this test method before.
My general answer to your questions is "yes".
The idea is to run one pickup at a time. Imagine removing one of the pickups from the guitar entirely, but in this case just disconnecting all of its wires from the guitar. Then, run the pickup that is still attached and see if it buzzes. If it does, then eliminate everything else in the guitar and run it directly to the output jack, with nothing else connected to the output jack. You are correct that normally you need to ground other components, but the purpose of this test is to eliminate all other components from the circuit.
If a pickup buzzed when connected to the circuitry, and also buzzed when connected only to the output jack, it could still be bridge, so add that to the output jack ground and see if it corrects the problem. If if doesn't correct the problem, then it has to be the pickup or something outside the guitar.
If a pickup buzzed when connected to the circuitry, but did not buzz when connected only to the output jack, then it's in the circuitry. You can add components back one at a time until the buzzing starts.
By the way, I wasn't sure about how your grounded the bridge. Did you run a wire from the output jack to the bridge, or did you connect the output jack to the copper shielding, and then ran a wire from the copper shielding to the bridge? If it's the latter, you could pretty easily just run a temporary wire from the output jack to the bridge to see if it helps.
