Ask HBS – Grounding a Tele

QUESTION

Name: Sean

Hello, I came across your site while looking for information on shielding a Telecaster. I have a strange wiring situation and I can’t find any examples of it online.

The black wire for my bridge pickup is connected to a metal piece that is connected to one of its screws. I’m wondering what this could be for (it seems to me that it could be for grounding, and according to your article “Telecaster Shielding – How to Cut the Noise and Keep the Twang,” I should remove it and just have straight wire from the pickup to the control).

Any advice you have would be appreciated, thanks!

ANSWER

Hello Sean, and thanks for the great question. You won’t need to move the wire, and you are absolutely correct. It has to do with grounding. Telecasters do all kinds of strange things with the pickup in the bridge. Some pickups have a metal plate that makes contact with the metal bridge instead of using a ground wire. Some guitars are like the way we have it diagrammed, and still, others are like yours.

The black wire from your bridge pickup is a ground wire. It’s making contact with the metal plate because the plate is itself grounded. It allows for a shorter wire to be more efficient. As long as the ground wire from your pickup has a clear path to the ground on your output jack, the guitar will work. You should leave it where it is, but you could move it to the volume as we have it, to the back of the tone control, or even directly to the ground on your output jack, and the result will be exactly the same because all of those points are grounded as well.

I hope the Tele sounds great! Let us know if you have any other questions, and thanks for reading Humbucker Soup!

Ed Malaker