Need help to troubleshoot noise with new pickups

[Deadlock]

Hi guys!
I just installed new tele pickups (BG50 bridge with BG52 neck) by following this diagram: https://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/main/downloads/schematics/profiles/teles/standard_telecaster__1_vol__1_tone__4_way.pdf

Though it seems some of the wiring is wrong, as I get loud hum when I don't touch the strings (mostly with some amount of distortion) and pop when I initially touch the strings. The stock pickups weren't so noisy. I also get a crackling sort of sound when I touch the shaft of the potentiometers. Sound wise, I feel the volume of the pickups aren't as high as the stock pickups I replaced, and they are pretty quiet compared to my humbucker loaded guitar - which I find strange considering the output of the BG bridge.

I ordered the neck pickup as stock wound, as the FAQ said that would be the best option for the 4-way mod I also installed. I have checked every blob of solder to make sure it wasn't bad soldering

Any ideas? Help is much appreciated  :D

[Dave Sloven]

Sounds like the bridge is not properly grounded.

Guitars have some kind of grounding from the bridge to the jack.  Usually - as on my Gibsons - it goes from the bridge to the back of the closest pot (generally the neck volume pot, or bridge volume pot in the case of of my single-pickup SG Junior).  This grounds the strings to the wiring harness and then through the amp via the guitar cable.

It's quite common for people installing new pots to forget to connect this.

Although, reading your post again with regard to what it says about the pots I am guessing the issue might be the wiring between the pots and the jack, or the jack itself.  I could also be that somehow you have created a ground loop

[Deadlock]

Thanks mr Orange :)

I was thinking the bridge would be grounded through the screws that go into the base plate of the bridge pickup, but I'm not sure.

The noise and pops seems to be worst when the pickup selector is only on the bridge pickup, but still present in all other positions. The pots act a bit funny, as if it has static building up. When I touch them, I get the crackling noise for a few seconds and then it stops, only to crackle again when I touch them again. Any other metal part doesn't crackle when touched, only the pots.

About the jack part, I didn't do any work to the jack at all so I assume it still works as before. The soldering looks good between jack and the pots, though I should probably double check the connections anyways :)

[Deadlock]

After a bit more troubleshooting myself, I think it might be the volume pot that is a bit dodgy. It's brand new, but this has been my first real solder project in a loooong time, so I most likely used too much heat on the poor thing. The crackling seems like it comes from moving the shaft, and even the 'micro vibrations' from my finger being there seems to make it go wild, though it doesn't make any noise turning it up and down. Could the extra noise and pop sounds come from overheating/'frying' the volume pot?

I think I have to disregard the volume difference too, since my other guitar is just damn loud :P

[Dave Sloven]

It's possible that you have cooked the pot.

I'm a Gibson guy so I don't know much about Teles.  Apparently you can add a bridge ground wire, and there are arguments as to why that might be a good thing (some tend to see it as unnecessary).

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/just-pickups/323367-bridge-ground-wire.html

[Deadlock]

Thanks, I might give that a go. I should also try bypassing one or both pots so I can see if they're faulty, instead of just swapping them if they're really fine :)

[Dave Sloven]

I had a friend's Tele apart yesterday and bypassed his switch so that at least his bridge pickup would work.  I didn't see any ground wire from the bridge in there.

What you could do is run the live wire from the switch directly to the output jack.  It shouldn't matter that the black earth wires are still connected to the volume pot, they will ground out through the jack anyway as long as you don't disconnect any wires in between.  If it suddenly sounds okay (it will probably sound brighter in any case, with the volume and tone bypassed) then the problem should be a faulty pot or a badly wired pot.

You can possibly even bypass the volume and tone individually and test each one.

[Deadlock]

I tried running the hot wire from the jack to the outer lug on the volume pot instead of the middle, which bypassed the volume pot. From this I gathered that the crackling noise was because of the volume pot being faulty for whatever reason, my reasoning being that if it was a grounding issue, it should still have been crackling if I bypassed the internal circuit of the pot.   So I replaced the volume pot with my last BKP pot (bought 3 for this exact reason), I was very careful not to apply excessive heat, and it doesn't do the crackling at all anymore! Yay  8).  Unfortunately I wired something wrong, so the volume pot now acts weird, which is the next thing I have to fix.. Hehe :lol:

Though the guitar is generally still a bit noisy, I will try adding a ground bridge to see if that fixes the noise. The guitar did have some kind of extra bridge grounding mechanism but I couldn't find any good info about it so I took it out. Something like the ground wire of the bridge pickup was connected back to a little metal ring wedged under the bridge plate itself by the screws.  I read that the screw grounding is enough for some, but others don't trust it and add the second ground via the wire you suggested, so I have to try it.

Something that really confused me was that in the original guitar electronics, I saw a ground wire was lead from one of the pots to a little metal ring in the cavity, for no obvious reason. Just one wire out, soldered to a piece of metal that didn't go anywhere at all, just screwed into the wood. Any hints?  :D

[Dave Sloven]

Something that really confused me was that in the original guitar electronics, I saw a ground wire was lead from one of the pots to a little metal ring in the cavity, for no obvious reason. Just one wire out, soldered to a piece of metal that didn't go anywhere at all, just screwed into the wood. Any hints?  :D

Does the guitar have some kind of shielding - e.g., conductive paint - in the cavities?  Often this is done with single-coil guitars to reduce noise.  If so that wire might be grounding the shielding to the jack

[Deadlock]

Oh, great point, it might just be covered in conductive paint. Thanks for pointing it out :)  I can imagine ungrounded conductive paint would gather a good amount of noise.

I also figured out why the new pot was acting funky. This time I forgot to connect one of the legs directly to the back of the pot, so I couldn't turn the volume all the way down. I'm getting smarter every day  8)