Les Paul grounding

  • Thread starter Thread starter glassjaw7
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glassjaw7

glassjaw7

Well-known member
Recently, I rewired my Les Paul Studio with a Vintage-Relic wiring harness. 500K pots, new motor city bridge pup, kept the stock 490 in neck position.

As far as tone, it sounds twice as good as before. I am noticing a lot of buzz/hum though when I take my hands off the strings. It seems like a ground issue but my wiring is solid and it's been checked over time and time again. Is this possibly being caused by the 500K pots allowing more high end frequencies though? I've searched on a lot of forums and found many posts stating that a properly grounded Les Paul has that hum and static buzz no matter what and that it's just part of playing a LP, and shielding was brought up as a remedy quite often.. Never had this problem before though...

Should I remove the tailpiece and double check that the ground wire is touching the bushing? I did raise the tailpiece a bit so that the low and high E strings would raise up off the bridge edge. Thanks for any help!
 
You're ion the right track check your grounding and the grounding path.

If That is not enough shield it. I prefer the acrylic aluminum to copper or paint but it's more costly.
 
yeah test the continuity of your ground, it shouldn't matter that you raised the tailpiece , it could be the nature of the new wiring and pickup combo though...
 
If the hum goes away when you touch the strings and/or another metal part on the guitar, then your guitar's ground is wired correctly. If there is hum now, that wasn't there before, then something else is wrong. Or your new pickups are just noisier.
 
FourT6and2":vp6vt4d4 said:
If the hum goes away when you touch the strings and/or another metal part on the guitar, then your guitar's ground is wired correctly. If there is hum now, that wasn't there before, then something else is wrong. Or your new pickups are just noisier.
Click to expand...


I guess that makes sense. It would be noisy even when touching the strings if it was a ground issue.. I swapped the 498T bridge pup for a motor city 2nd degree Black Belt. It's a low to moderate output pup. Kept the 490 in the neck and the noise issue occurs with either pup selected so I don't think it's the new pickup. I did switch to 50s wiring scheme.. Maybe that setup introduces more noise? It sounds awesome so I'd hate to have to go back to the 'modern' wiring scheme.

My next step will be shielding. What a PITA this is.
 
glassjaw7":2tjwnkpo said:
FourT6and2":2tjwnkpo said:
If the hum goes away when you touch the strings and/or another metal part on the guitar, then your guitar's ground is wired correctly. If there is hum now, that wasn't there before, then something else is wrong. Or your new pickups are just noisier.
Click to expand...


I guess that makes sense. It would be noisy even when touching the strings if it was a ground issue.. I swapped the 498T bridge pup for a motor city 2nd degree Black Belt. It's a low to moderate output pup. Kept the 490 in the neck and the noise issue occurs with either pup selected so I don't think it's the new pickup. I did switch to 50s wiring scheme.. Maybe that setup introduces more noise? It sounds awesome so I'd hate to have to go back to the 'modern' wiring scheme.

My next step will be shielding. What a PITA this is.
Click to expand...

Put the original pickups back in and see what happens.

50s vs Modern wiring shouldn't make a difference as far as noise is concerned.

Did you remove the metal shield from the switch cavity? Did the guitar even have one to begin with?

Same thing happened with my two LPs. Replaced all the old "crappy" wiring and pots with new stuff and now both guitars are noisy as fuck. Go figure. The grounds are wired fine, though. But definitely more hum now.
 
Have you had a reputable tech look at it ? It is probably something simple or maybe you have a bad pickup....you shouldn't need to shield the cavity.
 
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