Hi everyone. I've been reading here a a few days and started my first build based on the free plans. It's coming along pretty well and I'm at the Peizo installation part, but am contemplating throwing in a humbucker and some 250w pots I have for a 1 vol/1 tone kind of deal. I was curious if anyone has ever attempted a master ground to anything other than a bridge? I veered off of the plans and am making a bridge from the wood insert that came inside of my cigar box-so I was wondering if I could just solder the master ground to a screw or bolt or something and fix it inside the box? Or would I just electrocute myself ? If anyone has done this or has some tips, any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
You need to be a member of Cigar Box Nation to add comments!
Thanks so much for the replies guys. I had thought that maybe grounding to the jack might work, thanks for the verification. I think I'm going to try Mike's way on this one though, looks really slick too! And yeah, it's definitely an addictive hobby that's for sure, I could tell when I was working on this first one last night and I was already thinking up ideas for another.
Nice trick Mike, solves 2 problems with one devise. Ground plate and string retainer. Nice, I will use this trick ( I use wood bridges so no ground there). By the way, I have 2 of those box's I plan to build one label side up and one label side down to see if there is much sound difference. Mine both have pressboard tops and plywood bottoms.
I inspected the innards of the cheap "Squier" strat I'm using for my electric project when I took it apart. The pickup cavity was heavily shielded both with foil applied to the plastic cover and heavy metallic paint in the cavity itself. The only ground was to the receptacle for the 1/4" jack.
I believe the shielding on this instrument was due to the straight-wound (non-humbucking) pickups to reduce buzz from outside sources. I would think the ground to the jack (and then through the cable to the amp and finally the ground wire on the power source) would be sufficient....
But I'm gonna review the wiring diagrams before I start soldering!
Yup, get yourself some 500K pots! Next, I agree that you need to ground the strings, but it might be worth a try getting some sheilding tape and trying to ground on that. But not too sure if that will work!
Shawn said:
You need 500k pots for humbuckers 250k will work but makes the humbuckers sound bad.
250k ohm pots not 250W pots. 250W would be about 2.2 amperes@ 110 Volts. That might kill ya. Electric guitar pickups, especially piezos, don't produce enough electricity to light an bad idea.
Ground your stuff to the sleeve (not the tip but the shaft) terminal of your jack. This in most all cases is listed as (-). You should be good then.
Not being any sort of expert on gitarrrrr lectrics it still occurs to me that it might work if you dont want to ground to bridge,that you could ground to your tailpiece instead?
First welcome to the addiction on with your? you need 500k pots for humbuckers 250k will work but makes the humbuckers sound bad.
2nd you need to make the ground to the strings. The bridge is used since it touches the strings. Grounding to the cigar box will not make a ground unless it's made out of metal. You will not get zapped but your ears will hear a nasty buzz since the loop is not finished. Hope this helps
Replies
Mike Willmouth said:
I believe the shielding on this instrument was due to the straight-wound (non-humbucking) pickups to reduce buzz from outside sources. I would think the ground to the jack (and then through the cable to the amp and finally the ground wire on the power source) would be sufficient....
But I'm gonna review the wiring diagrams before I start soldering!
Shawn said:
Ground your stuff to the sleeve (not the tip but the shaft) terminal of your jack. This in most all cases is listed as (-). You should be good then.
-WY
2nd you need to make the ground to the strings. The bridge is used since it touches the strings. Grounding to the cigar box will not make a ground unless it's made out of metal. You will not get zapped but your ears will hear a nasty buzz since the loop is not finished. Hope this helps