The Steel Guitar Forum

I bought an American Academy recently and love it. Great sound EXCEPT it's a bit noisy. I'm sure it's a bad ground (if I touch the horseshoe pup it's quiet), but I'm not sure how to fix it and I don't want to screw it up. Can someone wise me up, please. Thanks!

Take the cover off and look for a loose or disconnected wire. Here’s a wiring diagram I used for my Model B


Here’s what mine looked like after redoing the wiring

Also, the strings need to be grounded somewhere. On most guitars, there's a ground wire in contact with either the bridge (if metal) or the tailpiece.

Thanks, guys. I think it probably is the bridge grounding, Jack. The problem is, it's bakelite formed in the body so I don't know how to ground it. I PM'd Rick Aiello for help asked him to post it here so all could benefit.

The Ace and Academy usually have an aluminum back plate that is not grounded ... hence the hum.

I have three of them ... drilled a tiny hole in the aluminum back ... put on a tiny screw and nut ... and ran a wire to the jacks ground ....

Quiet as a mouse now ...

Hope that helps ...

Thanks for the reply, Rick. I get what you're saying. Pardon me for being so dense, but where is the aluminum backplate?

These are all Bakelite, even the bridge. You cannot run ground to the bridge or tail piece as you would on a modern instrument. The wiring diagram (above) shows that the pots have a lug connected to the ground of the output jack, along with one of the wires from the pickup. It’s a very simple circuit and produces a very quiet result.

This is how Mike Auldridge apparently did it on his B model. Note the paper clip. I'm sure it could be made less conspicuous by weaving a copper wire through the strings but since this was Mike's guitar I'm just going to leave it for the time being.

Brad ... I've seen a few with no back plate ... just a piece of aluminum over the control bay.

As mentioned above ... try and rig up a scheme to ground the strings ... as Bill has pointed out ...

Thanks for all the help, guys. Gives me some good direction to get started. I'll fool around with it and see what I can do. Worst case is I just have a noisy steel (which I can live with). Maybe the easiest solution is to just keep my right hand butted up against the pup to ground it, but still be able to mute.

Well, I tried to leave it alone, but.....
Anyway, here's what I ended up doing. I weaved some copper wire through the strings, ran it down through the high E string hole and soldered it to the ground. It is quiet.

A quick and easy (albeit somewhat inelegant) solution. Good job, Brad!