Jack Output Wiring

[harkkam]

I just bought a fully loaded and wired pickguard from ebay. A fender strat american pickguard. But the problem is how do I know on which terminals of the jack output the black and white wires go to. And which wire is the ground wire?

[spud1950]

The black wire is ground and connects to the outer solder terminal. The white wire is hot and connects to the inner solder termimal.

[sumgai]

harkkam,

Hi, and welcome to the NutzHouse! ;D

(EDIT: See below for more info.) Unfortunately, spud got mixed up. When you look at the jack, its inner-most terminal is the ground, and the outer-most terminal is where you mount the hot lead. (In point of fact, spud, your description is correct...... for a plug!)

In some cases, the black wires are considered hot, but in other cases, the black is considered to be ground. It's not easy to tell which way is correct for you, your pre-wired setup could have been done by Mikey, in his garage late at night, or it could have been done overseas, there's just no way to tell. You'll have to trace the wires themselves....... the one that's soldered to the center terminal of the volume pot should be the hot lead, and the one that's soldered to the back of one of the pots should be the ground lead.

If you get them backwards, the circuit will still work (you'll get tone), but there will be one hellacious amount of buzzing and humming! You know what to do, in that case, right?

Good luck!

HTH


sumgai


EDIT:
Well, is my face red?! It seems that some (probably overseas) manufacturers of ¼" jacks do indeed put the terminal for ground on the outside of the jack's shell (which goes around, and makes contact with, the plug's sleeve), not on the inside. While searching for something else, I stumbled across a supplier's site that showed both kinds on the same page.

However, the terminals are now lined up in the same vertical plane, so 'inner' and 'outer' no longer apply. The only correct way now to describe 'which terminal does what job' is to say that ground is "that portion of the jack which will be secured to the chassis". Fortunately for us, the ¼" jacks we use are the 'open frame', which allows us to visually trace all the contacts. That should prevent wiring mistakes of this kind.

Sorry for any confusion.