Newbie Grounding Question

[musicmaker29]

Hi Everyone!

I'm just reading up to do my first repair job and pickup swap on my guitars (!) and I'm trying to understand the process of grounding.

Is it correct that the guitar has a ground wire that runs from the bridge and that each component must have a connection to this wire in some form to be grounded?? (i.e. attached to the back of each pot)

I get the feeling that I'm getting this wrapped around my head at some point, and most of the descriptions on the net describe the point of grounding the guitar but not the process of doing so!

Thanks for any help and sorry if this is a daft question!

Alex

[sumgai]

Alex,

Hi, and welcome to the NutzHouse! ;D

.........
Is it correct that the guitar has a ground wire that runs from the bridge and that each component must have a connection to this wire in some form to be grounded?? (i.e. attached to the back of each pot)

In a nutshell, yes, you're correct, that's what has to happen.

However, your question wasn't quite correctly stated, and might lead to some confusion later on, either for yourself or others. Let me restate the "full" version, with bolding on my addition:

"Is it correct that the guitar has a ground wire that runs from the bridge to the output jack's ground terminal......."

Along that wire, you can make an intermittent stop at the back of a pot, which is the usual case. You don't need to solder other ground connections directly to the wire, just solder them to same "back of the pot" mentioned a moment ago - electrically, it's all the same, and the results are neater to the eye.

Be aware that all this is true for standard wiring schemes. There are many alternate schemes where the "ground" wire of a pickup (or several pickups) might not connect directly to ground, but instead go to one or more switches. Just so long as you know that once in awhile, you'll run across an oddball circuit that doesn't make sense at first, that's all I'm saying here. In such cases, feel free to ask for help in de-ciphering those oddities.

HTH




sumgai