Strat project trouble shooting...

[gator]

Okay...So I have everything going to central ground. This morning I tried it without my main tone control grounded (the one with the large ring connector). It sounded good granted it was 6am and couldnt really crank the amp. I came home today to work on the final piece which is my "super tone control" that cuts/boosts midrange. I disconnected one capacitor from the pot shell and ran that to central ground. Then I disconnected the inductor from the top of the pot shell and ran that to the central ground. The inductor is connected to the pot terminal by a cap. Plug the guitar in and I am getting a pretty good amount of hum. Should I have not disconnected the inductor? Hum is not affected by touching anything like strings, nobs, guitar chord, etc....well except swithing to the humbucking positions 2 and 4. The only thing that has changed since this morning is I added another wire to the central ground for the inductor, then connected the inductor and other cap to the central ground with their own individual wire. As far as I can tell nothing in the circuit is touching the copper tape. I am sooo pd that I didnt crank the guitar up this afternoon to try it before messing with it again. Then I would know for sure. Oh and I put electrical tape accross the top of the pot shell so the inductor wouldnt touch it. It is "floating" above the pot shell.

[gator]

Well I just approximated where I had the amp volume this morning and it was pretty quiet....maybe this is just the nature of the beast...no pun intended. But seriously if you guys have any checks I should run through I would appreciate it. I know one commom problem is hooking up the input jack wrong. I checked and I have the ground/black wire running to the outer ring and the white going to the prong that runs to the inner ring. Anything else I should check?

[UnklMickey]

a couple of possibilities come to mind.

1 -- you had just as much hum before, but didn't notice because you didn't crank it up.

2 -- you accidentally broke the connection to your string ground.

Hum is not affected by touching anything like strings, nobs, guitar chord, etc....well except swithing to the humbucking positions 2 and 4.

[gator]

Thanks, I have gone back and tried few things and its not as bad as I initially thought. Actually its really not bad at all. I can turn my Epi Valve Jr up to 12 o'clock with not significant noise increase when going from position 2 or 4 to the other positons. It really doesnt start to become evident until at least 1 o'clock. I think its just the fact that I have gone from a Sey Duncan Hot Rail humbucker to high output single coils. So I was used to no noise at all in the bridge position.