two tips to share and start this debate (since everyone has their own ideas at what is best) to start the stirring of the pot (pun intended)....
Trying to solder 6 ground wires to one pot lug was hopeless, so my current technique/tip is to give everything a 3"-10"'tail', hot/lead/ground/in/out/etc even soldering a tail on grounding of the pot body(bodies), and then twist & solder the tails together. I find it easier to solder a 6 wire twist of ground wires than try to solder 6 wires to a single pot log. AND if I use a consistent wire-color schema it makes troubleshooting easier. AND if I have made a mistake, I'm not exposing any components to re-heat, just snip the little knot of soldered-together-wires and re-do it.
second tip seems obvious, wire/solder the componets together on my workbench before putting them in the git.
any other wiring/soldering tips y'all would like to share?
<Edit> tweaked my wiring diagram a touch to show more of how I actually do it....
Replies
Many ways to skin this cat,but even if you DO need to attach 6 wires to the back of a pot,tin your pot with a healthy spot of solder,join and solder your earth wires together,then introduce the combined wires to your tinned pot with a bit of heat,just make it fluid and all done,everything clean and you should not need to inflict excess heat on the pot
Running multiple grounds is crazily over-complicated: there's even more stuff to go bad. Keep it simple, do it like the pros...just take look inside any decent electric guitar and copy that, and learn how to do a good solder joint. Here's a Seymour Duncan layout...not quite how I do it, but simple and effective.
I know a lot of mass-produced instruments are wired like that, using the body of the volume pot as a common ground connection point, but have you ever tried to replace a failed volume pot that was wired like that? pain in the output!
they do that because every inch of copper wire they can shortcut saves $$$/day in profit when mass producing hundreds per day.
Thank you all...I now feel my guesses are "grounded" with logic LOL.
Please explain the grounding method, I've been running a wire from the jack to the metal tailstock.
I generally bend the ground tab back and solder it to the body - no wires. Similarly, bridge the tone cap from the ground tab to the tone body. That removes 2 of the 5 ground wires on your diagram. On that diagram, I'd ground the pup and the tone body to the volume body and then ground that to the jack. That means that you have 3 wires soldered to the vol pot body, which isn't a problem.
I think that, as long as you don't incorporate loops in the ground circuit, you're OK. Your diagram shows a loop on the tone and vol pots. I'm not sure why loops may cause problems but I've been advised against them. Problems with soldered joints are more likely to be a result of poor soldering. Good luck !
you see a ground loop in the diagram?
Why are you trying to solder 6 (six!!!) wires to one lug? Have I taken the bait that this is a joke?
maybe it only felt like 6, lets see, pup ground, volume pot signal ground, volume pot body ground, tone pot cap out to ground, tone pot body ground, jack ground, and bridge ground if using a mag-pup, that's 6 or 7 things to ground.
I have seen diagrams to "daisy chain" them, solder the pup ground to the volume body pot, then another wire to the volume pup ground lug, then another to the tone body, then another to the tone pot cap out to ground, then another to the jack ground, but that means there are 5 solder connections between the pup ground and the jack ground, and I have seen a LOT of comments on CBNation about suspect cold solder joints being the cause of the problem.
so I instead run a ground lead out for everything, and twist them together and add solder for the 6 or 7 wires. I find it easier to track against the wiring diagram, easier to actually hold wire/component/solder/iron when it's not several, and easier to troubleshoot and easier to replace a component if each solder point has only 1 wire.
just me trying to keep the torellian brain leaches happy
oh, and forgot the 2 pup shielding wires that needed to be grounded, that makes 8-9 grounds to tie together.