Star ground question

[huntgl]

I have wired a bass with a single humbucker, and 1 vol pot, and rather than connecting the earths to the back of the pot, i have run them all to a spade connector, which is screwed in to cavity. Effectively, this spade connector has 4 ground wires running into it: pickup ground, pot ground, string ground from the bridge, and the jack ground. Is this star grounded, or do I need to connect the central ground in some other way?

Thanks a lot :-)
Gary.

[sumgai]

Gary,

Congratulations, you've just successfully star-grounded your bass! ;D

No further wiring is needed..... until you get the itch to start modding the thing.



sumgai

[4real]

Yep

The whole 'ground loop' in a guitar has been shown to be a bit of a 'myth' here at GN2 but that tends to be the way I do it and can be useful. The 'star' effect is from all those 'rays' of ground wires coming off that 'point'.

You could do a similar effect by attaching everything to the back of a pot, but taht would be harder soldering ot a pot all those wires. Another 'cool' option might have been to make a 'loop of solid bare wire' that could fit under a pot and attach everything to that. This would ground the pot case (so you don't have to solder to the pot at all) and provide an easy to solder connection that is also, pushing against the shielding, so you don't need the 'screw' either.

You didn't mention shileding, but 'the screw' into the shileding on such a 'star ground' is often used to make contact there...using the pot as I described saves you a wire, does not sound like much, but that is 1/4 or 25% of wires hanging around, less wires can be neater. All that really matters is what should be gorounded, is!

[huntgl]

Thanks a lot for the positive replies :-)

I've done the same setup on a strat type guitar that I use for nashville tuning, but this guitar hums until I ground it by touching the strings (or the jack etc). I've tested the continuity of the grounds and they all seem fine, so I'm a bit bemused why this is happening. I've read a lot of posts on various forums, and i'm not suite sure if this situation is just something that's unavoidable, or whether I have got a real issue with my wiring here?

[newey]

huntgl-

If noise is the real issue, is the guitar shielded?

If it is, my only other suggestion is to wire all of the pots shells together and then ground that connection. There's no good reason why that should make a difference, but anecdotally, long-time member D2o reported success doing that.

[huntgl]

Well the pickup is a Lace Sensor, and these are very quiet. This may well be the 'problem';because of the fact that it is so noise free when I'm touching the strings, i think that there is too much noise when I'm not touching anything metal.

I have to say that I'm totally confused by this string touching/grounding issue. After reading the 'bucket of noise' artice on the original site, it seems to say that it is normal for this to happen, while other posts suggest that it isn't

[newey]

I have to say that I'm totally confused by this string touching/grounding issue.

It is a bit counterintuitive, but you are in fact grounding yourself through the strings and bridge ground by touching the strings, and you're the biggest source of noise around.

[huntgl]

Shielding it is then!

I'll get some paint sorted out in the new year and give it a crack :-)

Thanks a lot for all the input here, it's much appreciated as always ;-)

Cheers,
Gary.

[4real]

I'd check that the HB pickup is working on both coils, generally humbuckers are very quiet. Does seem a little odd. Shielding is a good idea...