EXPLAINING GROUNDING: WHAT IS IT? WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

We have all heard about grounding, also known as earthing, in our electrical circuits, but what does that actually mean? We had a friend of ours stop by complaining about a terrible sound coming from his guitar rig, and it seemed like the perfect chance for a deep dive into grounding, how it works and why you need it.

Pickups are passive electromagnets and, other than a housing made of plastic, butyrate or fiberboard, are made of conductive metal that creates a field above them. This field being disturbed by a vibrating metal string is what creates the electric guitar sound that we know. Most of us have spent time looking at guitar schematics, tracing where the signal wires go, but many players have trouble understanding and visualizing their ground circuit and how to apply it.

There is one pretty steadfast rule in guitar circuit grounding: Ground Everything Metal. Some observant readers will note that there is no wire running to the tuning keys on most axes, but they are touching the metal strings. Yes, from the bridge to the strings to the tuners, and from the pickups to the switches to the potentiometers and finally to the jack, there is a ground circuit running through your guitar - and you are a part of it. All of the wires that make up this circuit are headed in the direction of the easiest path to ground. This connection to ground is what nullifies the interferences that our pickups find so annoying to conduct, also protects you from potential shocks, and is what can make the difference between "quiet" and "noisy".

Back to our friend and his noise issue. He reported that his guitar began buzzing loudly at a gig, primarily when he let go of the guitar and was not touching the strings. This being the case, it meant that he was actually acting as a connection to a poorly grounded circuit when he touched his guitar, which is certainly not ideal.

One of the first culprits to check is the tightness of all of your potentiometers, switches and jacks. If any of these are loose, then they can move enough to disconnect a wire from underneath. The output jack is a very common source of this issue, but we have seen loose controls cause just as many problems.

In our friend's case, all of his pots AND the output jack were loose. Before tightening those up, we opened up the control cavity to see what we could find, and were very glad that we did. The wires inside were twisted tightly around each other, creating a series of tangles inside of the guitar. The ground wire had become disconnected from his jack, as suspected, so we could have simply re-soldered that. However, we didn't want him running into the same issue again, so rather than chase down each connection we replaced everything with one of our drop-in wiring harnesses and he was good to go.

With his wires connected correctly, and a caution about making sure his controls and jacks are kept tightened, our friend was ready to get back to rocking. Hopefully, both he and you have a better understanding of why grounding is important, and how it works. If you keep your electronics grounded, you will avoid the buzz and your sound will be able to speak freely.