I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I put a Muy Grande in the bridge of my 63 NOS tele. I ran a ground wire from under the bridge to the top of one of the pots. All was well.

Last night I installed the Muy Grande neck pickup and now the guitar is humming really loudly unless I have my hand on the strings or any of the other metal parts. I checked the grounds with an ohmmeter and there is continuity (less than 1 ohm) between the bridge plate and pots and output jack. I can stop the hum by also grabing the connector of the guitar cable at the amp. I don't believe it is my wiring at home as I tried a noisey strat through the same amp, pod and rockman and it was much more quiet,

Could it be that the pickups are just much hotter and that is causing the hum (buzz)? Could I have damaged the capacitor on the tone control by applying to more heat to the pot when I connected the pickup ground?

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks, Joe

I don't think so. The capacitor has no bearing on the hum - it only acts as a low pass filter.

Your guitar is humming because of a bad ground somewhere. Older teles have a star ground - where every ground connection from every component (pickups, pots, and bridge plate) are grounded at a single point somewhere in the guitar. Older teles ground at a point just behind the bridge pickup - newer teles ground like a strat at the back of the volume pot.

My guess is that your ground connection to the bridge plate is not making contact - you might have knocked it loose - the bridge plate must be grounded or it will hum badly when you arent touching the strings.

If you check the ground to the bridge plate and it is still humming, I'd do two things: (1) resolder all ground connections to the same point getting a nice hot solder joint and (2) check the ground wire connection on the neck pickup.

A guitar will also hum badly if the leads to the input jack have been reversed.

Leo,
Thanks for the reply. I believe that the bridge is grounded as I read close to 0 ohms between the bridge and the gound on the back of the volume pot. I removed the bridge pickup and the noise was still there. I am wondering if the Rio Grande pickups are the opposite polarity of the stock Fender's and maybe I need to reverse the wiring on the input jack.

I also connected a patch cable from the strings to the ground and bridge to ground, outpue jack to ground ........all without solving the problem.

Less than 1 ohm? It should be zero ohms, or so darn miniscule your ohm meter can't read it. You have a problem there if you can read any resistance between your various grounded components. Possibly a cold solder joint somewhere?