Telecaster Texas Special HELP!!!

[tazman]

I own a Fender Telecaster. The guitar plays great and all but I never really liked the pickups. So I decided to get a set of Custom Shop Texas Specials and replace the original ones. I have done this many times so I I thought no big deal.
One difference between regular Tele pups and Custom Shop ones is that on the neck pickup, with the regular pups the metal cover is grounded together with the pup ground at the pup, wheras on the Custom Shop ones the pup has 3 wires, one of which is from the cover.

My original intent was to just take and rewire the the new pup as the old ones and just ground together the 2 wires on the neck pup. Once I got the pups, they came with schematics and I noticed that the wiring was completely different than what was on the guitar, so I rewired it per the instructions.

One thing I was not sure about is that on the original wiring they had the ground from the jack and the ground from the pups all soldered together on the back of the volume pot including a wire from the metal bridge. On the new wiring, the jack ground is soldered to the capacitor to the back of the tone pot, the ground from the neck pup is soldered to the switch and the ground from the bridge pup and the ground from the case are just shown as grounded, but it does not say to what. So I soldered them with the ground from the jack and I also soldered the ground form the bridge with all this.

Now here is the problem, when I plugged the guitar in, everything works BUT... it's a hummer. If I touch any of the metal parts it gets quite... GROUND LOOP. It did not do this before. I think that maybe the grounds are not soldered to the right thing.

Any wiring expert that can help me?!?

Thanks,

Rob

[pollyshero]

Welcome Taz,

I recently ordered the CSTS's myself. Unfortunately mine came with NO wiring instructions. I've found that you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a different Tele wiring scheme...

The James Burton Standard model comes stock with CSTS's - here's the official Fender diagram which appears to be closer to what you described as the original wiring on your Tele:

www.fender.com/support/diagrams/pdfs/BURTONSTDTELE/SD0138602APg2.pdf

I wired mine like this & have no problems. I also shielded her according to the "Quieting The Beast's Cousin..." article:



As I said - I have no problems at all. She still hums a bit, but the extra effort to do the shielding was really worth it.

Good luck, & let us know how things turn out.

[tazman]

Did you find the CSTS louder as far as hum, compared to the stock pups?

Rob

[UnklMickey]

Rob,

UD's suggestion of wiring according to the "Beast's cousin" will solve your problem. and probably reduce the hum BELOW stock levels.


if you want to know why the hum is louder now, it's because of where things are "grounded". actually i suspect they are NOT.

if you connected to the tone cap on the side that connects to the tone pot, in most teles, you've created a problem.

there are many different tele wiring diagrams.

go to: fender.com/support/diagrams/


find the diagram that most closely resembles yours (before the changes)




i suspect, if you move the ground connections to the back of the volume pot, or to the "low" lug on the volume pot (the one the tone cap is connected to), 90% of your hum will go away.

you'll be back at stock.



if you want to improve on that, the "beast's cousin" would be the next step.




unk

[tazman]

unklmickey said:

Rob,

UD's suggestion of wiring according to the "Beast's cousin" will solve your problem. and probably reduce the hum BELOW stock levels.


if you want to know why the hum is louder now, it's because of where things are "grounded". actually i suspect they are NOT.

if you connected to the tone cap on the side that connects to the tone pot, in most teles, you've created a problem.

there are many different tele wiring diagrams.

go to: fender.com/support/diagrams/


find the diagram that most closely resembles yours (before the changes)




i suspect, if you move the ground connections to the back of the volume pot, or to the "low" lug on the volume pot (the one the tone cap is connected to), 90% of your hum will go away.

you'll be back at stock.



if you want to improve on that, the "beast's cousin" would be the next step.




unk

I was going to rewire it back to stock and then go from there, but now you have me intrigued. The back of the volume pot has a wire from on of hte volume lugs (and from one of the pup selector lugs. Are you saying to solder the ground to this as well? There is no cap connected to the volume pot anymore, based on the CSTS schematics.

[UnklMickey]

tazman said:

...The back of the volume pot has a wire from on of hte volume lugs (and from one of the pup selector lugs. Are you saying to solder the ground to this as well? ...

either place will work, that lug of the volume control, or the back of the volume pot.

tazman said:

...There is no cap connected to the volume pot anymore, based on the CSTS schematics.

what are the connections on the CSTS schematics for the tone pot, and the tone cap? (the other ones, NOT where the cap and tone pot connect together)



unk

[pollyshero]

tazman said:

Did you find the CSTS louder as far as hum, compared to the stock pups?

Rob,

I built her from scratch so I never had any other pups to compare. However as far as the shielding is concerned, I did have the CSTS's installed prior to shielding so I got a before/after.

My take: Before shielding she HUMMED. After shielding she hummed (does that make sense?).

"Quieting the beast" may or may not eliminate hum entirely, but the reduction was immediately noticeable and IMHO well worth the effort.

[tazman]

Well, I got a new switch and reqired the whole thing based on the James Burton wiring. Incidentally, the wire I used is cooper, not the silver stuff that the guitar comes with. I hope all will be well (may get some corrosion!?!).

Anyway, after the rewiring, the guitar is just as loud, so I could have left it alone .

Oh well...

Thanks for everyone's input. I may get some foil and do the quiting part to it...

[tazman]

unklmickey said:

tazman said:

...The back of the volume pot has a wire from on of hte volume lugs (and from one of the pup selector lugs. Are you saying to solder the ground to this as well? ...

either place will work, that lug of the volume control, or the back of the volume pot.

tazman said:

...There is no cap connected to the volume pot anymore, based on the CSTS schematics.

what are the connections on the CSTS schematics for the tone pot, and the tone cap? (the other ones, NOT where the cap and tone pot connect together)



unk

Bakc of the tone pot. Anyway, I rewired her like the James Burton one...