Guys im losing my mind with this grounding issue

[nickflook]

Ive read so many posts on here about grounding and everything, and its definitely made me build a better guitar with all your advice. Ive got an Ex-1 kit, the two humbuckers, 1 tone, 1 volume, and 3 way switch.

Ive installed a seymour duncan pickup in the bridge and an Ibanez INF2 in the neck, I know this is all wired correctly as Ive got over the diagrams a million time and rewired this thing twice. The pickups work and everything, i did the screwdriver tapping the pickups test and its all good. But the humming is out of control. Ive even tried running a wire from the metal part of the bridge pickup down to tone pot, as suggested in another thread, but this buzzing is still there. Ive checked the jack and everything, its all good. The thing is, all I have to do is touch any of the knobs or even just touching the jack with my hands and aaalll the buzzing stops and everything is a dream. So, knowing that, is there something im just missing, or are there any tricks to here? literally just touching the knobs or jack makes it all better, what can I solder to just make it think im touching those things all the time or something. This is clearly my first time doing this . Ive changed pickups before on other guitars no problem. . IM so close to having this all perfect, I just can NOT figure out this grounding issue. If somebody can help me and save my sanity I will literally buy and order a pizza to your house

[DrNomis_44]

That pretty much happens with any electric guitar, you could try using some copper foil or conductive paint to shield the tone/volume control routing in the guitar's body.

[nickflook]

im gonna try that, but I just know im doing something wrong here. I know guitars having noise and buzzing and stuff naturally, but this is just too much for it to be normal. I have the exact same pickup in another guitar and its pretty quiet compared to this one. I just spent so long putting this thing together I just want it to be perfect. Im gonna look into this copper foil stuff. THanks dude!

[gavinturner]

Hey Nick, did you run a ground wire from your bridge post to the back of one of the pots?

cheers,
Gav.

[DrNomis_44]

Definitely make sure you have the pot grounds connected all together, when I wire the pot grounds in a guitar I use a suitable length of tinned copper wire to link the metal shields of all the pots together, next I use some more tinned copper wire to connect any solder lugs of the pots that go to ground to the tinned copper wire on the pot shields, I tend to solder the bridge ground wire to the volume pot, shielding the routing for the control pots goes along way to getting rid of hum.

Also,

Check to make sure that none of the solder lugs on the pots have gone lose due to overheating from soldering, that can cause intermittent hum and noise problems.


As a side note, the passive control circuitry on most electric guitars tend to be high-impedance circuits which is why you get hum coming through the amplifier, high-impedance circuits are notorious for their ability to pick up hum and other electrical noise which is why it's a good idea to put copper foil/conductive paint in the control pot routing, the copper foil/conductive paint forms what's called a "Faraday Shield" when it's connected to circuit ground.

[dingobass]

Yep, sounds like a shielding issue.
Grab yourself a shielding kit from our store and shield all cavities, including the pup routs.
This will earth your pots and should stop the dreaded hum.

[nickflook]

Man I love you guys, the reason I got a pitbull kit is because everywhere I went everyone mentioned how this was the best forum. You guys seriously rock . Im gonna try this whole shielding kit thing and see what happens,.

I attached some pics so you can see what I got this thing lookin like so far, I wanted to make a guitar that looked like a nice piece of furniture lol . Ive been staining and sanding for weeks having a blast, and IM so close to getthing this electronics situation sorted out.

[stan]

good luck Nick, axe looks great

[kimball492]

Nick do make sure that you have a wire that is connected to the bridge itself normally one of the bridge posts run this to the back of a pot or if your putting foil in cavity run the wire to there . Good luck

[WeirdBits]

If you can, post a couple of pics of your control cavity just so we can have a look at your wiring. Extra sets of eyes can sometimes help to spot if anything out of place.

For general reference: Ibanez use red hot, blue ground, while SD has black hot, green ground.