I will be wiring up a Strat-style guitar next and realized that am not sure whether I should worry about a ground loop?
The pickguard has aluminum foil tape stuck to it. If I put one lead of an ohm meter on the foil, and the other on any of the components I see continuity. Normally I would solder a ground wire to each of the pots and switch housings and attach it to the "ring" on the jack. The only guitar I have wired where I did NOT do that was on a Jazz-style bass because everything was attached to a big metal jack plate.
Should I use a ground wire with this? Or should I allow the shielding tape to be the ground wire? My sense is that ground loop is mostly a problem when you have more than one component (e.g. an amp and a pedal) plugged into a grounded outlet, but that it's probably not much of a worry in the control cavity of a guitar. But I wondered if anyone has ever had this problem...and what the "best practice" is.