When is grounding necessary?

[bhuether]

Say you have two humbuckers. Say each has 4 conductor wiring. Say you want to switch one of them on. What does that imply for the pickup that isn't being used in that pickup selector position? Do any of those pickup's wires have to be grounded? The reason I ask is because in my Ibanez RG2820, there is a 3 way switch. When it switches on the bridge pickup, it grounds the white and black wires of the neck. But I don't see why that is even necessary. Seems like since the neck pickup's hot lead is disconnected from the volume control, the grounding of its white and black is a moot point...

I want to make sure I understand this since I am about to do some fairly elaborate rewiring...

thanks,

brian

[elcid]

You have two humbuckers. Each has 4 conductor wiring. You want to switch one of them on.

[bhuether]

Right, but the switch, when turning one on, simply connects the pickup's hot lead to the volume and the white and black become connected together (i.e. series wiring). So it seems to me that as long as that happens, it shouldn't matter what is done to the other pickups's white and black as long its hot lead is not conencted to the output. That is why the grounding of the disconnected pickup's white and black leads is confusing me because it seems completely unnecessary...

[callen3615]

When is grounding necessary?

When sounding good is necessary.

[callen3615]

Seriously Ive never had to wire any ibanez with 3 way switches so i dont know. If it was a 5 way it would be easy. I would take it to a tech, he shouldnt charge you, mine wouldnt, and he could probably fix it in no time.

[bhuether]

Ok, I think I figured something out.

Check this out:



Push/pull 1 is a coil cut switch that cuts both pickups simultaneously.

This should work as

Push/pull 1 down*
1 Bridge series
2 Bridge series parallel w/ neck series
3 Neck Series

Push/pull 1 up*
1 Bridge north coil
2 Bridge north coil parallel w/ neck south coil
3 Neck south coil

And then push/pull 2 when pulled up should bypass the volume and tone controls sending the pickup outputs for each of the settings above straight to the output jack.

But I am not sure about this. Can anyone tell me if this will work?

thanks,

brian

[bhuether]

Oops - that reply was meant for another thread...