Ric5
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- Jan 29, 2008
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Do I need a bridge ground for an active system?
- Thread starter Gojiberry22
- Start date
That logic then supports that almost all guitars are potential shock hazards.
To not ground a bridge based on the chance that another conductor is both not grounded and carries a potential above ground. Just because something is not grounded does not automatically make it dangerous.
It has to not be grounded AND be in contact with a source of electrical energy.
The bridge ground, all the way through to the wall outlet ground is to protect you from an internal fault in your amp.
Not some dicey dive bar with substandard wiring or even another piece of faulty equipment.
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Did you understand WHY they said that or are you just repeating it because it supports your position?
May not "need" one, but IMO should have one.
A guitar will work without a grounded bridge.
Before 3 wire outlets and power cords, nothing was grounded unless you bolted a wire to the amp chassis and connected the other end to a metallic ground like a cold water pipe.
It depends on where you disconnect the ground.
If the pickup a single wire and shield and you disconnect the ground, which is also the signal return, the pickup won't work.
Likewise if it has two wires plus a shield and you disconnect either of the two signal carrying wires, that are not the shield, the pickup won't work. If you just disconnect that shield, which is connected to ground the pickup will still work.
If you disconnect the ground to the instrument cable between your bass and the amp, the bass will stop working because the shield also acts as the signal return. It dies double duty. Shield and signal return.
For pickup operation, the pups don't care if the bridge is grounded or not. You might get hum but they will still pickup sound from the strings.
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Ive read all of comments here and opinions seem to be fairly mixed, so im just going to go with Emg's stance on this and simply leave the bridge ground out and just shield the cavitys .Simply because its would be a hassle to route for it.
Im pretty dead set on the full active system, so im not going to include a bridge ground on the off chance that I would switch to a passive system in the future. If the bass ends up buzzing like a bee hive i suppose ill have to add one after all.
Im pretty dead set on the full active system, so im not going to include a bridge ground on the off chance that I would switch to a passive system in the future. If the bass ends up buzzing like a bee hive i suppose ill have to add one after all.
That's false. If the ground and hot are inverted, such as in a situation where various pieces of equipment are running on different breakers, then you can have grounds at different potentials. For instance, you can have a situation where your bass is plugged into an amp on one breaker, and a microphone plugged into a mixing console on another breaker. Touching the bass and the microphone at the same time will give you a potentially lethal shock.
The electrical ground in your amp which carries to the bass is intended to protect you from an internal fault in your amp that puts electrical energy somewhere where it should not be, in your amp and by extension on to your bass. It is not designed, as I said in another response, to protect you from faulty wiring external to the amp. If you play at a venue that has other faulty equipment and or a substandard electrical system, than all bets are off. But to intentionally exclude the grounding to parts of your bass that you might touch, on the outside chance that another piece of equipment is not grounded AND has an energy potential applied to it, makes no sense to me.
It makes about as much sense to me as running the stop sign at a four way, because you are sure none of the other three cars will be running the stop sign.
The grounding thing should not prevent you from using an active bass, if that was your meaning.
The deal is, that by the very nature of the instrument amplifier having an unbalanced instrument cable, the pickups also must be unbalanced. Unbalanced audio, especially at the high impedances and very low levels of you bass, is highly susceptible to noise/buzz/hum.
Unbalanced is when you have an audio hot or + and an audio return or - and the minus is also the common aka ground.
You can also gave two wires and a shield, one of the two is + and other - and the minus is still common/ground. The shield can be grounded but it does not carry any audio.
If you were to go to a balanced pickup system, it would inherently be less noisy due to the balanced audio. You still have + and - carrying sighal, but neither one is tied to a common/ground. You also may have a shield that likewise does not carry any signal from the pups.
If you were to ground either the + or - of the you could lose your signal.
You need to be cautious to not let either the + or - of a pup in thus type of system become connected to ground.
It all comes down to understanding the difference and similarities involved with grounding and shielding.
As far as I know, getting rid of static is the sole reason to do it.
What other reason do you have?
Just try it without, and also try it with a temporary ground connection (a piece of wire touching between the jack and the bridge.
See for yourself if a grounded bridge is required for your setup.
See for yourself if a grounded bridge is required for your setup.
EMG no
Been running all configurations of EMG pickups and preamps with no issues for years. They do not need a bridge ground.
Been running all configurations of EMG pickups and preamps with no issues for years. They do not need a bridge ground.
Grounding the bridge provides a path to ground for interference picked up by the player's body.
No you don't. I have had one EMG system in a bass since 1989 and have never had an issue, and it's not grounded via the bridge. EMG adds all of the electronics and wiring for their systems to run, and with what you are installing it doesn't need a bridge ground either. I've also had the same system in a bass for three years and no issues without the bridge ground. I'm not sure of other active systems, but with EMG you don't need it.
That is the way to go. No problem needs no solution.
A lot of the posts here were not really relevant to your question.
In a nutshell: You don't need to ground your bridge with an EMG system. The system as a whole is of course still grounded. Grounding the bridge properly won't have a negative effect, but might not bring any benefit either. Some like for example Roger @Sadowsky still advise to do it "just in case".
Correct, that is why you should avoid it when it is clearly not necessary. It is a very small risk but if there's no need to expose yourself to it then you shouldn't.
That's why I said "improperly grounded" rather than "not grounded".
Either something is grounded or it is not. There are no degrees of grounding.
Anything thing that is said to be "improperly" grounded should be treated as being NOT grounded.
IMHO, the more accurate phrase is "improperly bonded."
