Star Grounding - Output Jack Question

[1958Bassman]

If all your ground connections are solid wires with solid solder points there is no way to built up enough resistance to make loops audible.

Many people properly ground all the stuff they are supposed to ground for the first time ever when they also pick up on this star ground nonsense, no wonder they see an improvement. Likewise, some people shield at the same time that they do star ground and can't realize 100% of the improvements come from the shielding.

Yup- twisted pair wiring rejects and cancels noise well and this is the reason it has been used for so long. However, I have seen guitars with bare wire that wasn't twisted in un-shielded cavities, without braided wrap. Pretty noisy, too. Having been built by a major manufacturer, I wasn't impressed.

 

[David Jayne]

Soldering to Pot housings or bending the lugs to solder them to the pot housing is stupid. The metal on the pot housing is not designed to be soldered to and as it it large, needs a lot of heat. You are asking for a dry joint (sonetimes incorrectly called a cold joint) that is neither mechanically or electrically sound. Bending the lug puts a mechanical twist on the pot substrate and may lead to premature failure.....


For my sins I am an Electrical Engineer. .

Probably should have left that last bit out.

 

[Chainsaw Willie]

I don't think it is the small voltage in an instrument that makes star grounding not an issue, it is that the current is very small.

In amp building I have always thought that it isn't really the star-grounding-pattern of star grounding that reduces noise, it is the coincidental fact that star grounding forces you to avoid using a shield (or the chassis) as a signal path. I have built some pretty noise free amps using a single shared ground buss and isolated all jacks from the chassis and tied them to the buss instead. Works great, doesn't have a million ground wires, doesn't use the chassis as a signal return. The only place the chassis is grounded is at the AC input connector.