How to ground a telecaster

[banjo-guy]

I have never wired a Tele from scratch . Is there a wire from the control plate( or the back of a pot) connected to the bridge? I know that the rear pick up touches the base plate and makes a connection to gound but where and how do the other componets make that connection. If someone would send me a link to an accurate Tele wiring diagram(pictoral if possible) I would appreciate it.
Thanks in advance for the help.

[BritishBluesBoy]

This should help...

http://www.fender.com/support/diagrams/

[Jack Wells]

There is often a ground wire that comes up through a hole under the bridge plate which grounds the bridge plate, saddles and thus the strings.

[sean79]

There is often a ground wire that comes up through a hole under the bridge plate which grounds the bridge plate, saddles and thus the strings.

That's how I've seen them...

[dean]

I always run a ground wire from the top of the volume pot through the bridge pickup hole. I strip the end of the wire and lay it between the body and the bridge, then I screw down the bridge. That has worked fine for all the Teles I have built or rewired.

Good luck!

Dean

[Pete Galati]

I only ground a Tele bridge if I'm using a pickup without a baseplate. If the pickup has a baseplate, it's connected to the ground wire, and that grounds the bridge.

That's the way my '69 Tele was built.

It's a cleaner installation this way. You could probably say that it's a more solid ground if you run a wire to the bridge though. But not running a wire the bridgeplate hasn't been a problem for me on either Tele I have that way. My feeling is, the less wires, the better.

Actually, I have 3 Telecasters that way. I forgot. I have a Tele with a humbucker mounted in the bridge, and I didn't ground that bridgeplate either. I wasn't sure if I'd get away with it on that one, but the humbucker grounded it just fine.

Pete

[banjo-guy]

I have Harmonic Arts 54 that I'm using in the bridge. In the info sent with the pick-up it says to remove the ground wire if there is one. The pick-up has a baseplate. I was unsure if the ground was connected by one of the wires from the pick-up or not, but I guess it is. I had originally planned to hook up a phase swithch to the rear pup but it seems that that won't be possible if one of the wires goes directly to ground.

[Pete Galati]

Originally Posted by banjo-guy

I have Harmonic Arts 54 that I'm using in the bridge. In the info sent with the pick-up it says to remove the ground wire if there is one. The pick-up has a baseplate. I was unsure if the ground was connected by one of the wires from the pick-up or not, but I guess it is. I had originally planned to hook up a phase swithch to the rear pup but it seems that that won't be possible if one of the wires goes directly to ground.

Actually, when people do wiring tricks with a Tele, what they tend to do is disconnect the cover of the neck pickup from the negative connection, and run a separate ground wire to that cover. And then the pickup you have to wire to go in and out of phase will be the neck pickup.

That way the neck pickup cover is always grounded, but the PU can be switched in and out of phase, or in series or parallel with the bridge pickup.

Or you could just remove the PU cover.

Pete

[banjo-guy]

I have a humbucker in the neck. I wired it up today and used a yamaha super switch to do this:

5. Full Humbucking
4. Front coil of Humbucker
3. Front coil and Bridge
2. Rear coil and Bridge
1. Bridge

I think it might be interesting to hear some out of phase sounds in additon to the above combos. Does anyone have other wire suggestions for a humbucker in the neck and a tradional bridge pup?

Maybe hooking them up in series or parallel ?

I have not heard the guitar yet , I am waiting for ferrules to arrive.

By the way the guitar is a mahagony thin line with a maple top.The neck is a conversion (short scale) maple with pau ferro board , standard thin line profile. It looks great. Can't wait to see how it sounds.