Les Paul Ground Wiring?

[aberry9475]

Hi all,

So I've decided to dive into the art and science of upgrading the pickups in my Les Paul. I'm not a total noob to electronics..I've built 3 Fender clones and a 50 watt plexi as some fun diy learning projects, but I've never worked on any guitars before.

I will be shielding the cavity with copper foil and using shielded wiring from the pick ups and to/fro the selector switch. The wiring itself is fairly straightforward. My question for you, the guitar gurus, is how to best properly ground everything.

Soldering to the back of the pots is supposedly bad practice. In my plexi the pots are lined with buss wire soldered to the back of them because that's just how they did it back in ze day,even though there are better possible grounding schemes. I'm not concerned much for historical accuracy here (it's an 08 lp standard and I'm ripping a pcb out of it just to start) so I'd like to learn how to "properly" ground a guitar, specifically a Les Paul. I saw this article here and it seemed interesting

 http://www.newenglandluthiers.org/contents/Articles/Tips_Techniques_Tools/JPLP_wiring/ground_loop.html

Help me out and I'll make sure to take plenty of pretty pictures and do some sweet clips when I'm done.  :D

Thanks!
 
– Alex

[FELINEGUITARS]

Interesting article

I try to ensure a one way flow as much as possible for signal grounds - the back of the bridge tone is connected to the bridge volume which in turn is connected to the neck volume . The neck tone is connected to the neck volume.
The neck volume is like the star point - all other grounds go here, whether from he switch, jack, bridge earth and then the pathway goes to the jack (-)

The potential trouble comes from that I screen the control cavities, pickup and switch cavities, but it has never been an issue on my guitars. I use a Nickel screening paint that i find to be superior to copper foil in some practical ways
The screening in the switch and pickup cavities is brought out to (you guessed it) the back of the neck volume.

For me this works and I don't seem to suffer , although maybe I don't put my guitars through as challenging a situation as some players might encounter as far as RF interference goes.

One thing that helps considerably is that I have a couple of very trusty soldering irons - one for general use and the other for pot casings. The pot casing soldering iron is just an Antex XS25 but with a huge soldering iron tip that stores a LOT of heat  that is enough to transfer heat to a pot casing to get a good (and quick - thereby not overheating the pot's internals) solder connection.

[wyattriot]

I've had issues soldering wires to the back of pots simply because you do need a great deal of heat and because there's no physical connection to hold the wire in place while doing the work. At the same time, I've never had a problem soldering the lug that needs grounding to the pot, so I've recently been soldering the ground wire to the lug while soldering the lug to the pot. Just bend the wire around the lug and get a strong physical connection, bend the lug towards the pot, and stick the iron between the lug and pot. The solder flows to everything and I get a nice, strong and shiny connection. Plus, you've only heated the pot once, so you're much less likely to ruin anything.

There could be some downside that I'm not anticipating, such as the relative difficulty of "undoing" this solder joint should you want to change your wiring type, but I've never had a grounding issue on any guitar where I've used this technique.