Telecaster wiring question

[Tom Wolverton]

Regarding the ground wire that runs from the bridge plate to the signal ground. Is there ever a reason to leave this wire off? I've seen tele's wired both with and without this ground wire.

[Curtis Alford]

I have them wired both ways. Some switching designs requires this removed or left off. If you don't have a hum problem it doesn't matter.

[Bill Hatcher]

the ONLY time you can leave this off is if you have active pickups that require no ground.

if you have passive PUs then you must have this wire. i have never seen one without it and i have rewired hundreds of guitars.

[Tom Wolverton]

What about "noiseless" pickups, like the ScN or Kinman PU. Still passive, right, so yes to the bridge wire?

Side note: often when I record with my old Ricky bakelite lap steel, since it does not have the strings grounded, I'll run a wire from the horseshoe out to a ground point ( sometimes I stuff it inside my waist against my skin). Kills most of the hum.

[Curtis Alford]

You may have as I myself have been doing this for about fifty years. It depends on the switching arrangement you are using, the product instructs you to remove it for some,just as some instruct you to ground cover on the neck pick-up for other switching design.
I have two teles now that are not grounded and do not hum with Tex-Mex p/u.

[Bill L. Wilson]

The Telecaster pick-up, if mounted on the typical brass plate, is grounded to the bridge with the height adjustment screws. That is provided a jumper ground wire is soldered from one lug of the pick-up to the brass plate.

[Roman Sonnleitner]

Exactly! On a "regular" Tele, the strings are grounded through the bridge pickup mounting screws, which touch the metal baseplate of the pickup, and that baseplate is connected to the pickup's ground wire with a small piece of wire.

Personally, I'd still run a ground wire from the bridge (you just need to squeeze a thin piece of wire - coming from the pickup cavity - between the bridge and the body); with modern wax potted pickups, possible corrosion of mounting screws, and gunk from sweating building up between screwheads and bridge plate, I'd rather be safe then sorry - heck, some modern Tele bridge pickups don't even have a metal plate on the bottom...

The only time you can run into problems with "double" grounding (seperate wire & through the bridge pickup) is if for some reason (series/out-of-phase wiring schemes) you have to reverse hot and ground on the bridge pickup - but in that case, best practice would be to cut the connection between the metal bottom plate on the pickup and ground, and run a separate ground wire from that plate.