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Post by ourclarioncall on Jul 30, 2020 10:32:19 GMT -5
Still trying to get my head around this grounding stuff
Okay so.....
Let’s say I have a circuit where only the signal wire from the pickup goes into the a dpdt mini toggle and the return wire goes straight to the output jack and doesn’t connect to the toggle switch at all
Do I have to somehow ground this switch ? And why am I grounding it ? What will happen if I don’t ? Sorry for the questions, I suppose I should know this by now as I’ve been here long enough ! My brain needs refreshed
Why do I have to ground for example a dpdt mini toggle on a plastic pickguard that has no shielding (as in no foil or copper tape on the pickguard or cavity ?)
Is it because when I touch the toggle switch my body is like an antenna picking up stuff, and it’s grounding the stuff in me , through the toggle switch , into the switch , touches the lugs/terminals and then goes into the hot signal making noise through the amp ?
What if my mini toggle switch had both the signal and return wires from a single coil pickup going into it and then out again to the output jack ? Wouldn’t any noise/interference being grounded out of my body go through the switch into the switch , into the lug terminals , then go through the return wire to ground instead of the signal wire ?
I’ve also been told by the gentleman on here that on the toggle switch
There is a metal area on the case but this is not connected to the lug/terminals , and that I can ground the switch by having shielding on the pickguard and the metal casing on the switch will touch the shielding . But if the metal casing is not connected to the lug terminals how would any electricity /current /stuff ?? Pass from me to the casing to the lug terminals or whatever else ? Confused 😐😆
Thanks
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Post by ourclarioncall on Jul 30, 2020 10:40:13 GMT -5
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Post by ourclarioncall on Jul 30, 2020 11:15:58 GMT -5
Okay , just thought I’d open up an old switch and I see in this one (dont know if they all have this) there a plastic piece that I assume is designed for insulation ? so that the person doesn’t get electrocuted ? Not that you could in a guitar with low current ? But maybe in other applications/appliances where dpdt’s or other switches are used  |
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Post by frets on Jul 30, 2020 15:02:36 GMT -5
Hey Clarion,
All the various mini toggles in guitars I use are 125 Volts, 6 Amps. I can’t think of a circumstance or mod in a guitar where the switch wasn’t grounded. You don’t need to run a ground off the casing.
They also make mini toggles in 250 Volts 3 Amps. I have a few of those. I bet the ones you have are 125 Volts 6 amps. That light blue color looks like an MTS 125 volt. But you can’t tell by just having the switch in hand. You must read the writing on the side of the switch. I hope that helps:)
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Post by thetragichero on Jul 30, 2020 15:23:54 GMT -5
hmmm i bet the 125v 6a and 250v 3a switches are quite similar, huh?
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Post by ourclarioncall on Jul 30, 2020 15:28:05 GMT -5
I don’t no nutin bout volts and amps 😄
I’m kindergarten level , I possibly sound like I know /understand more than I actually do as I’ve learned to speak a little of the lingo
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Post by ourclarioncall on Jul 30, 2020 15:32:32 GMT -5
60 cycle hum
EMI
RFI ?
abcdefg??
I get bamboozled between all these and all their possible solutions
Also the different tyes of ground , signal ground , earth ground
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Post by blademaster2 on Jul 30, 2020 15:53:49 GMT -5
You do not need to know anything about electricity theory for guitar wiring, except to connect everything correctly according to a good diagram.
The grounding question is best summarized to say that any metal that does not carry the pickup signal should be connected to "ground" - which on your guitar is the bare wire from humbucker pickups, or the negative wire of a single coil pickup. That in turn is also connected to the backs of the control casings, and the ring connection on the guitar jack, and any other metal on the guitar. If it is not, it is *not* going to definitely cause trouble except it might create a little more noise (in the form of hum) in your guitar sound. When grounded metal is made to create a "cage" that fully surrounds the rest of the electronics it is called a shield (like the copper foil you sometimes see inside the cavity, but also sometimes done using conductive black paint), since it will somewhat/mostly block noise from getting into your signal. The more complete, low-resistance and unbroken the shield, the better the capability to block this type of noise. The guitar cable also has a shield (braided little wires that form a tube within which the signal wire goes) that connects to the ground on the guitar (and this is what should be connected to "earth" ground via your amplifier).
On a toggle switch, the handle and casing are not connected to the terminals on the switch so they are not grounded that way, but they can be grounded by the collar that goes through the mounting location if there is a grounded wire or metal foil at that location. I have guitars where the toggle handles are not grounded, and I cannot say that I ever felt that this was causing trouble of any kind.
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Post by ourclarioncall on Jul 30, 2020 16:14:32 GMT -5
blademaster2 greetings from Scotland my friend, thanks for the response. i did the parrot style copying of diagrams for a while in the beginning, but it was not Nutz enough to be really guitar Nutz 🤓 , so I really want to learn this stuff. Give a man a fish v teach him how to fish and all that jazz. I appreciate I would be ultimately best going to school to learn this stuff and get proper foundations but unfortunately it hasn’t worked out, so I have to come here and ask as many stupid questions as possible to help refine my growing (thanks to the good folks on here) understanding. you might regret commenting as you’ve made yourself a target to shoot more of my queries at 😉 just one point- so , if I have any type metal that is not even connected in any way to the circuit it will produce noise ? If I just drilled a bunch of random holes in my plastic pickguard(With no copper or foil shielding tape on the pickguard or in the cavity ) and attached a bunch of nuts and bolts , that would actually have an effect on the sound coming out the Amp ? Apologies if I’ve misunderstood. I just can’t understand how an actuator ? The bit you push on a toggle switch needs to be grounded if it’s not actually electrically connected to any part of the circuit 🤔
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Post by blademaster2 on Jul 30, 2020 16:22:47 GMT -5
If the metal parts that are not grounded are not themselves picking up noise from the environment (this depends on many factors such as lights, proximity to large electrical loads, or large loads in your home), then it will not inject more noise into your circuit. If the environment is electrically noisy, then grounding all metal will prevent these pieces from carrying any noise that will couple into your circuit.
Like I said earlier, the ungrounded toggle switch handles on my guitars have never caused noise to my knowledge.
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Post by ourclarioncall on Jul 30, 2020 16:31:53 GMT -5
If the metal parts that are not grounded are not themselves picking up noise from the environment (this depends on many factors such as lights, proximity to large electrical loads, or large loads in your home), then it will not inject more noise into your circuit. If the environment is electrically noisy, then grounding all metal will prevent these pieces from carrying any noise that will couple into your circuit. Like I said earlier, the ungrounded toggle switch handles on my guitars have never caused noise to my knowledge. could you explain HOW (scientifically) (and briefly /simply) a piece of metal can create noise is it something to do with waves/the guitar pickups /magnetic field ? is there any obvious examples of metal parts that are not part of the circuit but cause noise? what about a metal pickguard for example ? Let’s say my circuit was one single coil going into a dpdt switch and then to the output jack. So the metal pickguard is only touching the parts of the dpdt that are not electrically connected , would that still cause noise ? |
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Post by frets on Jul 30, 2020 17:02:17 GMT -5
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Post by blademaster2 on Jul 30, 2020 17:14:55 GMT -5
Voltage fields are always present when anything that has voltage on it. If it is a frequency - and not DC like a battery - it will propagate (like ripples in a lake if you move your finger in the water up and down) in many if not all directions. This is the way that radio signals travel. Power lines (50Hz or 60Hz) do the same but have large wavelengths (on the order of kilometres). Anything metal in the path of these waves that is *not* connected to ground will pick up the propagating voltage waveform on them (grounding the metal takes this picked up signal to the earth and very little of this voltage signal will be able to be sustained on the metal). If these metal objects are coupled to the signal wires in a guitar (by being close enough to the metal to transfer the voltage to them via capacitive coupling) then the wires will have this small signal superimposed on any other signals that they carry, such as your guitar signal. If the metal in the guitar is large enough - and not grounded - it will have this voltage waveform on it and a better capability to add this signal to your guitar signal. Also, remember that the actual earth ground is more or less the amplifier connection to the wall plug ground, and hence the guitar plus the cord offer enough resistance to current flow that this noise signal is not terribly-well connected straight to ground even if they are grounded in the instrument. Perfectly noise-free guitars are therefore not achievable.
There are a number of electromagnetics courses in university electrical engineering programs that teach the above phenomena in detail and allow them to be mathematically modeled, so I *know* I am not able to clearly distill it all into one paragraph. If I spent a lot more time I might be able to describe it better or more accurately than the above, but that is a job unto itself.
... and yeah, what Frets said .....
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Post by ourclarioncall on Jul 30, 2020 17:47:28 GMT -5
blademaster2i won’t pretend to have fully grasped everything you’ve said , but I think I get it 👍 there are some great things in there that I can go and study a bit deeper but it now makes sense. And is very interesting another “mind blown” moment. Like the time I found out about AC and that it alternates back and forth when I thought everything was like DC. thanks for taking the time to write it and appreciate its hard to convey complex things in a nutshell to a novice. i had just read of a guy that had installed a metal pickguard and that his guitar seemed MORE noisy instead of less noisy which was his intended purpose I think . It was suggested he had not grounded it properly
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Post by ourclarioncall on Jul 30, 2020 17:54:42 GMT -5
fretsthanks frets , kindee with Cindi lol 😆 we call it play school over here. Ah , great days. No bills , no responsibilities... btw, what difference would volts and amps have regarding the toggle switches ? Would there be a benefit to using 250v instead of 125v ? I just got a bunch of these dpdt switches from China so they may well be the ones you mentioned .
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Post by thetragichero on Jul 30, 2020 17:59:19 GMT -5
ratings won't matter inside a guitar. dealing with such small voltage and current
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Post by ourclarioncall on Jul 30, 2020 19:22:55 GMT -5
@inventor ha ! Nice one.  |
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Post by ourclarioncall on Jul 30, 2020 19:25:21 GMT -5
Ah right , thanks Trage
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