62' MIJ reissue, No hole for bridge ground?

[beyondat]

I recently got a 62' RI MIJ body and when I tried to install the controls I noticed that there is no hole leading from the control cavity to the bridge. Is this supposed to be like this and if so how will I ground it? Thanks

[line6man]

You are going to have to run a strip of copper foil from under the bridge up to the bridge pickup cavity where you can ground it.

Example:

[beyondat]

WOW! Is there any other way? what about grounding it to some copper shielding in the control cavity?

[two fingers]

Most of the MIJ stuff I've seen (including the one I own-my avatar) has the ground on top running from the bridge pickup to the bridge. I guess you could drill the hole yourself?

[beyondat]

I would need a special drill to do that right?

[line6man]

Originally Posted by beyondat

WOW! Is there any other way? what about grounding it to some copper shielding in the control cavity?

I'm not sure what you mean.

Your options are to either run a strip of copper tape from under the bridge to the pickup cavity, like in the picture above, or drill a channel from the bridge to the control cavity.

IMHO, the copper tape method found on older basses looks extremely stupid, which is probably why Fender started drilling the channel from bridge to control cavity to hide the connection.

If this were my bass, the very first thing I would do is drill that channel.

FWIW, People will usually just sandwich the bare ground wire between the body and bridge, but I prefer to use a small piece of copper foil instead, as it works much better.
This is how I ground the bridges on my basses:


After you drill the channel, drill out a small recessed area where you can solder the ground wire to a piece of copper foil.

[beyondat]

Man, it seems like a really tough angle to drill at. what if I don't ground to anything, will the noise be unbearable!

[line6man]

Originally Posted by beyondat

Man, it seems like a really tough angle to drill at. what if I don't ground to anything, will the noise be unbearable!

Well, haven't you already played the bass to hear what it sounds like ungrounded?

I would definitely get that bridge grounded, it's going to be extra noisy if you don't...

It really shouldn't be too difficult to drill the channel.
The key is to get the angle right though! You don't want to end up drilling through the top or back of the bass if the drill isn't angled correctly to exit in the control cavity.

If you are uncomfortable doing this yourself, any competent luthier should be able to do it for you fairly easily.

[newbold]

just do the foil tape from bridge to bridge pickup. It looks awesome and works great.

[line6man]

Originally Posted by newbold

It looks awesome

It looks absolutely ridiculous.
I laugh out loud when I see it, unless it's a vintage instrument.

[beyondat]

What if I drill a hole from the bridge to the bridge pickup because my bass has a circular hole about a 1/4 inch deep under the bridge? One more question, how do I attach the wire/copper to the bridge pickup?

[line6man]

Originally Posted by beyondat

What if I drill a hole from the bridge to the bridge pickup because my bass has a circular hole about a 1/4 inch deep under the bridge? One more question, how do I attach the wire/copper to the bridge pickup?

If you want to drill from the bridge to the bridge pickup instead of to the control cavity, that would work fine.

It doesn't go to the pickup, it goes into the cavity where it goes to ground.

If you have copper shielding in the pickup cavity, you can just solder the strip to the foil inside the pickup cavity.

Other wise, you will have to run a ground wire into the bridge pickup's cavity and solder it to the strip.

If you have a grounded metal base plate in the cavity, you can connect the strip to that.

[newbold]

'Ground' should have some way to connect to the ground outside the instrument...like to the bridge to the strings to your fingers through you.

When I was playing with tapewound strings I could hear the single coil pickups noisier when the volumes weren't set up full because there was no ground through my fingers.

[beyondat]

What I did since I couldn't find any copper shielding at Home Depot is drilled a hole from the bridge to the bridge pickup. I then pulled the ground wire from the control cavity through the pup cavity until it reached the bridge. My bridge hasn't arrived yet so I can't test it but it sounds dead quiet when I plugged it in without any strings installed(soloed each pup). I also broke my 250k tone pot trying to fit the control plate in and had to use a 500k pot in its place. Does anyone know what effect this might have on the tone?
Thanks for all the help? I love Talkbass!

[line6man]

Originally Posted by beyondat

What I did since I couldn't find any copper shielding at Home Depot is drilled a hole from the bridge to the bridge pickup. I then pulled the ground wire from the control cavity through the pup cavity until it reached the bridge. My bridge hasn't arrived yet so I can't test it but it sounds dead quiet when I plugged it in without any strings installed(soloed each pup). I also broke my 250k tone pot trying to fit the control plate in and had to use a 500k pot in its place. Does anyone know what effect this might have on the tone?
Thanks for all the help? I love Talkbass!

I did see some kind of copper tape in the garden section at Home Depot a couple of times. It's supposed to keep away snails or something. It was very expensive though, $10 for a small roll.

A tone control works by varying the amount of your signal to feed into a capacitor. The more signal (less resistance) the more treble is cut, and the less signal (higher resistance) the less treble is cut.

A 250K tone control on 10 is the same as a 500K pot at roughly around 8-ish (assuming an audio taper) depending on the taper of the pot.
At the highest setting, you are applying 250K ohms between the signal and the capacitor. A 500K pot can got up to 500K ohms, for a brighter tone.