Grounding explained

[DGNR8]

A guy at my job explained how and why grounding works. All this time and I didn't get it. I think I can wire those four guitars now. The trouble was never that I was reading the diagram wrong or wiring sloppily. The problem is that most diagrams draw the little DEVO hat for ground, but don't explicitly instruct where to put them. Since I have never gotten first person instruction, I didn't know what to look for. See if this sounds right.

Copper coils wrap magnets and create an electromagnetic field. Electrons in the field settle into a neutral state. When a string vibrates over the field, the electrons charge positive on one pole, and negative on the other, causing them to move toward the positive. They flow along the path of least resistance (like water downhill--it's a law of nature), and go all the way around the circuit back to start. This includes the signal going out to the amp. The amp takes those electrons that are charged, and converts it to sound, which gets amplified. FINE. So far so good. Here's the part I didn't get.

The white (positive) wire connects to switch to pot to cap, etc. or straight to pot, pot to cap, to jack. Jack has to go back up an equal path across all of the same targets. Rather than string two wires all the way through the guitar, which is bulky and increases resistance (and cost), metal hardware in the guitar can be connected all the way back to the pickups. I thought that grounding meant that the circuit would END in ground at the bridge (like a lightning rod going into dirt). But from what I now understand, the ground goes all the way back to where it started, to complete the path. Then at the major intersection of wires (like a star ground on the volume pot) can string a ground over to the bridge to ground the bridge, not to dead end it somehow. This way if you touch the metal part, you are not going to create another path from the jack to the metal part, and get unwanted sounds.

The tide goes out, then comes back. This is alternating current. It goes out positive and comes back negative. This explains not only the theory behind the ground, but also why each pickup is charged on one end or the other, or how the charge would travel along the one side of an HB and the back along the second one. He said that this is also the reason that microphones have two wires, so the signal can go out and return. This also explains why the jack has metal sandwiched into shielded plastic so that one terminal is always going to be taking in positive and send it back out from the other terminal, which touches the jack cable on the other side of the black ring, which must also be somehow shielded.

Most of you are thinking--duh. That's how guitars work. But you can know that empirically, but not be able to apply it to every orientation of pickups and switches and shit. I can now look at a diagram and see what they are going for by having a cap joining two pots or whatever. I am still going to have to experiment with them. The Rick has an atom bomb bird nest without any documentation. If you have only built Fenders, you can get a sense of how they work. But I am working on a Rick, a Mosrite, a Fender with Jazzy pups and a 5-way switch, and a single coil no switch Bronco. The Coronado didn't have a diagram either. The Tele Deluxe is like a Robocop vasectomy.

I will try to wire 4 guitars on wednesday and see if I learned anything. The Jazzcaster has been a full blown nightmare. It taunts me. Now I think I just have a few wires to add and it will be roaring in no time. That and the blue Bronco are the HEAVIEST fenders I have ever felt. It's the Alder. The Tele Deluxe isn't even this heavy.

[More Cowbell]

Ground is found at your feet...just look down.

[ElCapitan]

Very informative. I've got major grounding issues at the moment with my Les Paul, I've put in a new jack and re-soldered in the pickups and yet there's still a grounding "hiss" that goes away when I touch anything metal. Do I need to put any shielding in or anything?

[Bacchus]

They flow along the path of least resistance (like water downhill--it's a law of nature...The tide goes out, then comes back.

The meditative, zen approach to electronics.

Nice one.

[BobArsecake]

Ground is found at your feet...just look down.

<3