Jack grounding issue

Hi all-
Cleaning up, refinishing and putting together a guitar of my brother’s that has been in a box for 20 years as a Christmas gift for him (will have its own thread to follow). Having an issue with the jack though. I haven’t finished setting up the bridge and trem, and haven’t strung it up, but after soldering things in today, I can tell that the pups are live and the switch works as it should. It is an HSs, 5-way Strat layout. There are some parts here and wiring in particular that I haven’t worked with before. Specifically, the gray wire with an insulated conductor. From what I see, this should go from the volume pot to the jack, with the white inner wire going to the hot tab on the jack. Like this:

That’s not mine, but you get the idea. Got that. Here’s what I’ve got at the volume pot:

The insulated white wire is in the middle tab on the volume (as it should be) and the shield fibers (forgive me if that’s not the proper terminology) is grounded in that bug solder blob on the back of the pot.

I’m getting a lot of hum and noise when plugged in, and the jack feels finicky - hum goes on and off with applying some over pressure or changing positions a bit. With a 90 degree jack however, I can rotate it and when the metal part of the cable is in contact with the jackplate, it goes quiet and all is well. My question is, do you think the jack is just worn out? Was I wrong to use the shield wiring to ground at the jack? Or is there a chance that there is a grounding issue elsewhere that might still cause that particular symptom? Thoughts? Thanks in advance.

Nelly

 

Volume pot is working fine, for what that’s worth.

 

Thanks all. Cable is good. And I have a spare jack in the parts drawer. I’ll give that a try, probably this weekend. I’ll report back if there’s any issue. If not, I’ll have a full thread with the completed project. It’s been a fun one.

One last question tho - would you use that same gray wire with the insulated white wire and use the shield to ground, or would you just run two separate wires? I have some nice cloth wiring on hand, as well. Just a thought.

 

Thanks again, all! Replaced the jack and that's all it took. For mostly 35-year-old components with some less than expertly done wiring after a bridge pickup change (by gosh knows who), all works perfectly fine with the new jack in there. Here is a link to the thread of the completed project. Cheers!
https://www.tdpri.com/threads/evh-tribute-project-1-of-2.1056427/