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Permalink Reply by Jon Leslie/Runaway Veal Music on December 7, 2017 at 9:26pm

I’ve got the 3rd lug of the volume pot grounded to the back of the pot as well as as a ground wire soldered to the back of the pot that I’ve tried touching to the bridge as well. Have I double grounded somehow? Seems odd...maybe it’s a bad pot or solder. Is there a way I can test it with a multimeter? If so exactly how please. The wiring cavity is acessable but kinda cumbersome. With the pot fully up...it’s not too awful but I touch the volume knob I hear noise and when I turn it it’s crackly...when I touch the input jack...almost fine...little buzzing...but somethings off

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Permalink Reply by JL on December 8, 2017 at 12:33am

Hard to say but a few ideas:

1) a good solder point is shiny and flares out around the edges like a fried egg, a bad solder point is dull and tucks under at the edges like a meatball.  a multimeter MAY help find it in the > 0.1 ohm range, or may not, the meter used very low power DC, and bad connections react more to the high frequency low power AC signal from a pickup and EMF noise.

2) usually touching the metal volume pot, grounded bridge and strings, ground part of output jack caused EMF noise to get better, you might have a signal and ground backwards somewhere. check that the ground wire from the pickup, the ground wire from the pickup cover/case, the body and 'ground' lug of the volume pot, and the sleeve connection on the jack are all correct and not one accidentally swapped over.

3) ground loops are where you have wiring that goes to ground along 2 different paths, making a loop that acts like the old uhf hoop antennas catching the magnetic component of EMF noise.

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Permalink Reply by Korrigan on December 8, 2017 at 2:59am

I experienced this and found that I had switched my hot and ground at the jack.

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Permalink Reply by Taffy Evans on December 10, 2017 at 12:39pm

I'd try a different power outlet/circuit, could be interference from another appliance in the house. Also check the guitar lead. I have fixed two complaints re this, with this suggestion,  this week.

Taff 

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Permalink Reply by Jon Leslie/Runaway Veal Music on December 10, 2017 at 3:52pm

Thanks everyone. Trying a different volume pot and following suggestion here...shaking hands don’t help lol

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Permalink Reply by John Sawyer on December 11, 2017 at 7:45pm

A crackly pot is a bad thing.   You can put foil tape under both pots, inside the cavity to ground them together, this might help eliminate a bad solder joint to ground...  if the jack is in the same cavity, then you don’t need to solder the pots to ground if they are all tied to the same piece of metal...  

good luck!   Oh, just for giggles, did you try a different cable?

somewhere around here, I have a pic that might make more sense...

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