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50's wiring "no workie" well. Grounding Q?

kats

Member
Joined
Jan 6, 2005
Messages
274
Ok, I switched to the 50's wiring on my 58RI (04) so that when I roll off volume I don't lose all my tone. I play directly into my amp and roll the volume up on leads and down on rythm.

Ok here's what happened - There's a slight difference when I roll off the volume, some of my tone is saved - but still a noticable drop - so still not the greatest. However, the tone pot works weird now. The tone contol has barely any change rolling down from 10-3 but all the tone is gone between 3-1. Wassup with that?

Anyhow, so my luthier (who is also a collector) checks the wiring on a real 59 and notices one difference. The ground wire is attached to all the pots.

Does this make any difference at all? I was wondering because of the wiring diagrams posted on this board there is no mention of the ground wire.

Any help is appreciated!
 
K

Kim R

Guest
Hi kats,

All of the pot cans have to be grounded to the output jack "sleeve" contactor, as do the pickups, selector switch, and tailpiece. The tone controls each have to be wired so as to allow varying amounts (varied by turning the tone pot) of the "hot" signal (not the ground) to pass through the capacitor to a gound.

The "tone stack" application of capacitors makes use of the nature of inductance capacitance to allow high frequencies to pass through while bass frequencies are shunted. The tone pots need to be wired so that they allow more signal to pass through as they are turned toward zero (they are wired in the reverse of the volume pots). The capacitor inhibits the low frequency signal, therefore allowing more and more high frequency to go to ground, "canceling" it out. Signal that is grounded out will not be heard.

All of the cans have to be grounded.
 
Last edited:

ashbass

Active member
Joined
Jan 13, 2003
Messages
1,918
I believe that that his question was more about how the can are grounded. The 50s bursts had one wire looping along the tops of the four cans, so each pot was connected to the rest of them daisy-chain like.

My R7 and his R8 come stock with one wire connecting the neck vol and tone pots and then another wire connecting the bridge vol and tone pots. There is no "one wire" running between all of them.

I don't believe that the "one wire" is necessary as the pots all share the same ground already in your stock grounding. Putting the "one wire" on them looks more authentic maybe, but there should be no difference in how the pots opperate because of it as they are all sharing the same ground already.

More than likely, you have funky pots or a mis-wired something or another somewhere.
 
K

Kim R

Guest
ashbass,

I think I remember you posting a question about this before; sorry if I misunderstood this question...

You are correct. Ground is ground - it doesn't matter where it connects as long as it ultimately connects to the sleeve connector on the output jack.

For example: As long as the tone pots are each grounded to their respective volume pots, and the volume pots are grounded to the shielded side of the output lead, there is no reason to ground the tone pots to each other. I have oftened wondered why Gibson does this (old and new), and can only guess that it is a carry-over from other control layouts. I suppose it does provide for a little redundancy should a pot "twist" if it becomes loose, possibly breaking one of the grounds.
 

kats

Member
Joined
Jan 6, 2005
Messages
274
Well I don't think it's funky pots. There worked the way they were supposed to before rewiring the caps. I played the guitar a little more and it seems to me that the whole guitar sound brighter now. The tone isn't lost too bad when you roll off the volume, but the tone control itself is not as dramatic as it was until you get to 3-1.

I'm begining to think this is the way '50's wiring is supposed to be. I saw another post only a couple of weeks ago on here about the same thing.

Oh PS: Ashbass is right about the daisy chain thingie. My wiring is grounded - just not daisy chained and I wondered if that could be the difference.
 
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