grounding to a floyd rose claw?

[mniel8195]

hey guys my set of holy diver 7's just came in. im putting them in my bernie rico hesperian 7. The question i have it how do i ground to the floyd rose? on the bake knuckle diagram it says ground from the jack socket and from the volume pot. where do i need to ground? its two volumes with a three way switch no splitting and no tone pot.

[Frank]

The usual ground connection on a trem is on the spring claw. It can take a bit of doing though, you often need to rough sand the metal to get the solder to stick and you'll need a fairly hefty soldering iron. Then run a wire from that string ground to the backs of each of the pots and on to the jack socket. Backs of the pots may need sanding too if there's any coating on them.

[mniel8195]

so basically connect claw-volume-volume-to jack socket. Is it ok for the ground connections to b e connected to the same soldering points on both pots that all the other wires are connected to? on bkp diagram there is just on solder point on each pot. what kind of sand paper should i use?

[Frank]

so basically connect claw-volume-volume-to jack socket.

Yes, and any tone pots.

Is it ok for the ground connections to b e connected to the same soldering points on both pots that all the other wires are connected to?

Yes, that's the usual way of doing it as the soldering is a lot easier. But it's still ok if you have two soldering points.

what kind of sand paper should i use?

You may not need it, if you're lucky then with enough heat the solder will flow nicely onto the metal. Some pots have a sort of laqueur coating which is impossible to solder onto so you need to clear it off down to the bare metal before trying to solder. Pretty much any sandpaper will shift it and roughen up the metal enough for the solder to make a good join.

[Frank]

Lacquer

I can never spell that word. Except just then, obviously.

[mniel8195]

having done another guitar recently im going to sand the pots. i think my iron is a 60 or 65 watt. last guitar i used a 25 and it was hard to use on the pots forsure.

[FELINEGUITARS]

The secret to getting a 25w iron to work well with pots is to have a big tip on it
The two irons on my bench are a 50w temp controlled iron with a pointy tip and an Antex XS25 with a big heavy tip on it - this acts like a huge heat sink and has enough heat stored in it to warm up the back of a pot to easily solder up wires

Also using non lead free makes for an easier job.

[mniel8195]

another question i have is on the mkp diagram it shows that you have to bend one of the pot tabs on both volume pots onto the pot and solder it. this seems hard to bend it into a position that can actually be worked with. do i have to do this or is it ok just to get the connection through a small wire?

[Toe-Knee]

Its ok just to bridge it with a piece of wire.