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I think your control cavity is just fine! I also think youre about to get in over my head. I have fussed and fussed with wiring and have come to the conclusion that single coil switching and all the reat of the falderall can leave you onstage with no guts to your sound when you hit the single coils switch. You want to ditch that jack and get right to a switchcraft jack. Also centralabs pots like fender sells have been made the same way with a solid carbon resicter path for many years and will tolerate many solder/unsolder conditions. When it comes down to switching choices, playbthe guitar as if youre on stage. If any of your single coil choices or series parallel choices drop your volume or alter your output frquencies out of the park drop em fast unless you have an incredible sound guy who can push your fader up or down fast or change the girth or lack of your tone. If you hit a choice that sucks out your volume or girth, eliminate that part of the circuit. Trust me, your fingers are your tone and volume controls and fancy switching just isnt worth the hassle. Also, one single star ground means a single star ground. Dont solder to the shield leaving a gap between components go to your star ground after youve used your ground to connect your componets. Also the micro switches are sensetive to soldering time and again. Also, use a good quality soldering paste on every joint. The flux in the core is not trustworthy ive found after resoldering 230,000 times. If you purchased the pickups as new most places will have a tech you can contact to help you with the switches. Im very sorry im not too much good at that. The information you need is out there on the internet. Im sorry i know some basic wiring but multiple switches just confuses me. Simple is better. I can tell you a well shielded guitar doesnt need a string ground either.
Single coils suck. Buckers get the sound out all of it.
Maybe the ground shield and one coil wire soldered together from each pickup should both go to the volume control instead of being grounded to the shield. Youre involving the signal ground and one coil end of each pickup straight to ground. Try grounding them to the volume pot first instead. Also, the small pots with plasiltic square backs may have stuff inside designed for active stuff we dont know about. If they fit put in good old solder em a hundred times hard carbon path pots. The path inside most square pots is a resistence paint on mylar, wich wont tolerate or soldering experimentations. Lol yes the output signal ground from tbe pu's should go to volume first.
Iphone? Apple? Miggt as well buy an apple computer too because all their junk is dependent on each other. Tablet to pc, phone to pc. To get you to buy all their stuff. I had an i pad air and it would get java script loops and freez and inatead of being able to reset it at home it had to be taken somewhere to have it done for 50$ a pop. I finally folded it over a chair back. Never again.
Wire your pickups in humbucking parallel mode and wire them stright to the switch or seperate volume pots and then maybe you can work backwards to your single coil switching. Geez im sorry i wish i was more help, but atart simple and then decide if you need the rest, if you went with two volumes you may get the single coil/humbucker tone you want by just varying the input mix of each pickup.
Attachments
Its dirty
The control cavity on ky aluminum bass. Humbucoers wired parallel out to jack. No tone pot, no volume pot, no capacitor just pure tone all the way out.
It's not apparent if the guitar bridge + strings are solidly grounded to the electronics? With me, I am a totalist wrt grounding using 3M copper foil as well as MG Chemical Super Shield 841-340G making an RF tight compartment. You see, the active electronics in my Gibson RD Artist was simply possessed until I done this mod.
Double-check that you've grounded the shielding on your pickup wires.
I had some nasty probs like this on my les paul, after doing a complete re-wire, drove me up the wall. Eventually I found my guitar cable (actually, the amphenol plug at guitar end) was the main source of my problems, but while investigating I also found that I'd missed soldering the shielding around wires from one pickup onto a ground point. It's an easy mistake to make - you solder your pickup wires to pots etc so your pickups work, but you forget you also need to ground the mesh shielding inside your pickup wires.
I had some nasty probs like this on my les paul, after doing a complete re-wire, drove me up the wall. Eventually I found my guitar cable (actually, the amphenol plug at guitar end) was the main source of my problems, but while investigating I also found that I'd missed soldering the shielding around wires from one pickup onto a ground point. It's an easy mistake to make - you solder your pickup wires to pots etc so your pickups work, but you forget you also need to ground the mesh shielding inside your pickup wires.
Just my two cents on this thread:
Had a ton of problems on my homemade, shielded every component, pickup cavities, and still got a significant amount of buzz.
After one month of soldering, assembly, dissasembly, I was crazy. And then one day, I realised what's wrong on the opposite side of the bass;
Fu*k!ng monorail brigde! I've soldered grounding on the first string bridge, but not the others!
Grounded others, everything works fine from that moment!
This pic was taken in the building progress, don't look at the bridge tuning positions...
Had a ton of problems on my homemade, shielded every component, pickup cavities, and still got a significant amount of buzz.
After one month of soldering, assembly, dissasembly, I was crazy. And then one day, I realised what's wrong on the opposite side of the bass;
Fu*k!ng monorail brigde! I've soldered grounding on the first string bridge, but not the others!
Grounded others, everything works fine from that moment!
This pic was taken in the building progress, don't look at the bridge tuning positions...
Sounds like you have tried all the tips given by others which sounds like good advice, but have you checked your electrical outlets sometimes those grounded outlets are poorly grounded or not at all especially older houses and apt.s they only have 2 wire outlets but someone put outlet to accept a 3 prong plug .check it out.✌
Yes sir receptacle is to what I am referring to .Thank you.
When I get into shielding a passive bass, there are a few things I try to do every time.
First, I use copper foil with a conductive adhesive backing, so that overlaps are more forgiving, and don't require a lot of fussy foil-to-foil soldering. I don't use shielding paint unless I'm into some really complex cavity shapes or tiny, twisty drill-throughs. Just me; YMMV.
Second, I make sure that pickup wire pairs are twisted on their way to wherever they are going; this helps with common noise rejection (CMR) on each pair, whereby we hope that induced noise on one wire is 180 degrees out of phase with induced noise on the other wire.
Third, I do follow a (relaxed) star-grounding scheme. I try to terminate all ground leads at a single pot shell, physically nearest to the output jack, but I don't get too obsessive about it. Sometimes, it's not practical. In many cases, it also makes no difference that I can measure.
Fourth, I make sure that holes passing from one cavity to another (say, from pickup cavity to control cavity) are shielded. This can take several forms, depending on how the cavities are laid out. Sometimes, I'll use a short segment of plastic soda straw with copper foil wrapped around it. Sometimes, a segment of shielding braid around the (twisted) wire pairs, if there is room. Sometimes, conductive paint in the passage (gravity dripped, pushed through with a Q-Tip, or swirled in with a very fine paintbrush). In all cases, this shielding does need to be grounded; I usually make sure it has a good connection to the shielding foil in both cavities, or to the foil on the underside of the pickguard (if present).
Fifth, as several folks on this thread have suggested, I make sure there's a robust ground connection to the bridge(s). I've seen some pretty sketchy stuff in this arena, even on high-end production basses. Of course, that bridge connection is not going to get you additional shielding from the strings (nor capacitative coupling to your body) if you use coated or tapewound strings. Personally, I think the bridge-ground connection is overrated. But it's still worth doing, IMO. Belt and suspenders.
Finally, I shield the pickup covers if they are not already shielded. Pickups that are internally shielded usually have a ground wire or terminal that needs to be connected to the central ground point. Pickups that are not shielded, I line with copper foil (with careful cutouts for the pole pieces, if they stick up through the cover, like on stock J pickups). I connect the cover shielding to the foil in the cavity with a length of insulated stranded wire, soldered at each end, making it long enough so that I can pull the pickup (or its cover) partway out of the cavity for later maintenance. I try to avoid letting the cover shielding touch the pole pieces, as this can be problematic -- in rare cases, pole pieces are part of a pickup's active circuit (!), or some grounding scheme.
I have yet to encounter a situation where I thought I had to ground the pole pieces. In most magnetic pickup designs, they are coupled to the rest of the circuit inductively, not conductively, and therefore grounding them won't serve much purpose (and may actually introduce noise).
In all of this, an ohmmeter, or at least a conductivity buzzer, is your friend.
Hope this helps some folks.
First, I use copper foil with a conductive adhesive backing, so that overlaps are more forgiving, and don't require a lot of fussy foil-to-foil soldering. I don't use shielding paint unless I'm into some really complex cavity shapes or tiny, twisty drill-throughs. Just me; YMMV.
Second, I make sure that pickup wire pairs are twisted on their way to wherever they are going; this helps with common noise rejection (CMR) on each pair, whereby we hope that induced noise on one wire is 180 degrees out of phase with induced noise on the other wire.
Third, I do follow a (relaxed) star-grounding scheme. I try to terminate all ground leads at a single pot shell, physically nearest to the output jack, but I don't get too obsessive about it. Sometimes, it's not practical. In many cases, it also makes no difference that I can measure.
Fourth, I make sure that holes passing from one cavity to another (say, from pickup cavity to control cavity) are shielded. This can take several forms, depending on how the cavities are laid out. Sometimes, I'll use a short segment of plastic soda straw with copper foil wrapped around it. Sometimes, a segment of shielding braid around the (twisted) wire pairs, if there is room. Sometimes, conductive paint in the passage (gravity dripped, pushed through with a Q-Tip, or swirled in with a very fine paintbrush). In all cases, this shielding does need to be grounded; I usually make sure it has a good connection to the shielding foil in both cavities, or to the foil on the underside of the pickguard (if present).
Fifth, as several folks on this thread have suggested, I make sure there's a robust ground connection to the bridge(s). I've seen some pretty sketchy stuff in this arena, even on high-end production basses. Of course, that bridge connection is not going to get you additional shielding from the strings (nor capacitative coupling to your body) if you use coated or tapewound strings. Personally, I think the bridge-ground connection is overrated. But it's still worth doing, IMO. Belt and suspenders.
Finally, I shield the pickup covers if they are not already shielded. Pickups that are internally shielded usually have a ground wire or terminal that needs to be connected to the central ground point. Pickups that are not shielded, I line with copper foil (with careful cutouts for the pole pieces, if they stick up through the cover, like on stock J pickups). I connect the cover shielding to the foil in the cavity with a length of insulated stranded wire, soldered at each end, making it long enough so that I can pull the pickup (or its cover) partway out of the cavity for later maintenance. I try to avoid letting the cover shielding touch the pole pieces, as this can be problematic -- in rare cases, pole pieces are part of a pickup's active circuit (!), or some grounding scheme.
I have yet to encounter a situation where I thought I had to ground the pole pieces. In most magnetic pickup designs, they are coupled to the rest of the circuit inductively, not conductively, and therefore grounding them won't serve much purpose (and may actually introduce noise).
In all of this, an ohmmeter, or at least a conductivity buzzer, is your friend.
Hope this helps some folks.
One additional note: shielding pickup covers on humbuckers is probably a waste of your time. Unless you believe in belt, suspenders, and bungee cords.
Also: not all pole pieces are easily grounded. Soldering to steel slugs, ferrite slugs, or various other materials used in pole pieces/blades/etc, is not always easy, and may require exotic solders or techniques. Avoid if possible.
Also: not all pole pieces are easily grounded. Soldering to steel slugs, ferrite slugs, or various other materials used in pole pieces/blades/etc, is not always easy, and may require exotic solders or techniques. Avoid if possible.
