Gibson les Paul 50’s wiring and ground issues (solved)

[My name is mud]

Well . I try to figure out why my 50’s standard lp is noisy .
First I don’t know if the burst buckers are really unpotted or not.
Then here is how it is wired :


It respect the standard schematic of the 50’s original wiring. The tone knobs are not grounded with the volume ones .




But then after some research, I see that some guys solder a ground to the 4 knob





And also in some diagram you see the tone knob grounded too :



Should I try this soldering?

Have you ever add ground to the tone knob of your Les Paul ?

Don’t know if I should do it or not .

 

[My name is mud]

Ok let’s try .

 

[Peromustejn]

Try shielding the control and toggle switch cavities first.

 

[Axelman8]

Hey there

Grounding was my first thought when seeing pic 1.

I think you can just wind a wire around a tone pole with out soldering and see hear the result...

Also, shielding/isolating this box could benefit. That is done in my singlecoil strat at that throughly makes a big difference

Cheers

 

[My name is mud]

So I have grounded the 4 knobs and it quite the same result.
The ground noise stop when I touch the high E strings.
Let see if the input jack is well soldered . And then it can be the bridge that is not grounded, or just these retro pickups that are noisy as hell.

 

[My name is mud]

No problem with the input jack …
Ahhh … fender is the same shit , whatever you do it’s never perfect . Electric guitar suck

 

[Axelman8]

Hey there

Your 2nd pucture with the 50s wire scematic has a ground symbal on all the knobs but does not show the wiring on the scematic.

This may be the answer to the problem, but I would not the solution how to ground

 

[Peromustejn]

In the first pic, the tone pots are grounded to the steel mounting plate. You can verify using a multimeter.
I had noise issues with my Les pauls and shielding the cavities resolved it.
Here is my R7. The shielding in the control cavity and toggle switch cavity are grounded together with a wire.

 

[My name is mud]

Yes I have some copper tapes, but sometimes it provoke shortcut if you don’t do it very well. I have done it in most of my guitars . But yeah… I need to unscrew everything hm… let’s do a pause
@Peromustejn so you said that just this does the job in your case ? Hmmm .

 

[My name is mud]

the tone pots are grounded to the steel mounting plate

Yes I think about it at first, so what I have done redoing a loop it’s pretty useless ?
Don’t know if I put copper tape with this metal plate etc if it don’t shortcut …

 

[Geordielad]

Ok let’s try .

I have one of those standards, it's totally quiet and no mods to it. If you are gonna solder, be careful not to apply too much heat to the pots you can burn them out very easily.

 

[My name is mud]

I have one of those standards, it's totally quiet and no mods to it. If you are gonna solder, be careful not to apply too much heat to the pots you can burn them out very easily.

No it’s ok I ve done it and even if it’s not really better, it is not worse . This one is really recent . It has burst buckers 2 and 1 if I’ll not wrong. But some say they are not wax potted…

 

[My name is mud]

That’s not the first time that I mind that pickups with chrome covers are more noisy than basic one without covers

 

[Geordielad]

No it’s ok I ve done it and even if it’s not really better, it is not worse . This one is really recent . It has burst buckers 2 and 1 if I’ll not wrong. But some say they are not wax potted…

Ok, i think those BBs are potted though from what i read on the Les Paul forum some time back. I do have another one that sometimes picks up interference from nearby cables in my studio.

 

[Axelman8]

Hey there

Why did you wire the pots all together? That isnt shown in the scematic

 

[Peromustejn]

@My name is mud yes for me shielding fixed it. But only when I had shielded the toggle switch cavity the guitars became completely quiet.
If you can, try to shorten the unshielded wires soldered to the toggle switch.
The wire on top is from a les paul custom.

 

[Toopy14]

Check the continuity between the wire I circled and one of the bridge posts.

 

[Axelman8]

Hey there

I see a diffrence in the scema and in your conection in picture 1

The yellow line, thats your configuration

 

[My name is mud]

Hey there

Why did you wire the pots all together? That isnt shown in the scematic


View attachment 115943

It is it is, watch this :

 

[My name is mud]

Hey there

I see a diffrence in the scema and in your conection in picture 1

The yellow line, thats your configuration

View attachment 115947

Yes but this is Gibson that do it like that, I imagine that they don’t do that randomly. The schematic are not coming from Gibson but via the net so maybe they are different way.

I believed that the tone pots by default wasn’t grounded, but in the end it seems they where with the metal plate under them, as doing a ground loop don’t improve nothing .

It’s ok that the guitar buzz, but at the same time this guitar normally reproduce the 50’s, and it’s not done to play thrash metal first as in these days it doesn’t existed .

That’s me too that always play with these old classics because I like how they look and (their tone too), but it’s like buying a 50’s car and crying because I cannot go to 1 to 100 in 3 seconds .
most of my guitars are all modded. Pickups, tuners, this and that …. And it seems that even a Les Paul standard at this price needs to be pump up to do « modern things » on it