Official Luthiers Forum!

Any of you ever use something other than the bridge for the ground? If so what do you use?

I've never seen, or used one,
but a grounding bracelet has been talked about.

Tailpiece if you have one.

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I used the aluminum saddle of the acoustic-style bridge I made once. I don't know if I would do it again, because the aluminum seems a little on the soft side. It sounds the way I wanted it to, though.

I cannot think of any other way to ground all the strings at once. If you wanted to severely over-complicate the situation, why not ground each tuner, and run a channel for the grounding wire right beside your truss rod slot?

I make a string-through body and make an aluminum block that fastens into the back of the guitar. I ground to that.

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StuMusic

I dont have a problem drilling the hole for the bridge ground on my hard tails, I was just wondering if anyone had a different method they use, I thought I saw someone on here using a block to ground.

I don't quite understand. The only reason you ground the bridge is so you when you touch the strings you are brought to ground potential too...because your body acts like a big, huge antenna, hence when you used to walk near those big old radios in your grandparent's house it got louder (or am I the only one who remembers doing that?). So you're not using the bridge for a ground. Ground comes from the amp. The bridge is being grounded.

I've used a string anchor on electrics with wood/bone bridges. Just a piece of 1/8" aluminum set into the back and drilled for the ball ends. Run a ground wire to it from inside and you're all done.

D'oh! I missed Zlurgh's post. So yeah, what he said.

Is the question just out of curiosity? The only reason I can come up with not to ground the bridge is if you're using vintage tube amps and are worried about electrical shock if there is a failure, as explained towards the bottom on this website: http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/shielding/shield3.php which also shows how to install a capacitor that will achieve a good level of protection while still grounding the bridge.

Note that if you were to leave the bridge un-grounded for this purpose, you would also want to make sure your knobs are not metal, because they will be grounded through the pots.

I always just ground the bridge anyway. The capacitor thing might not be a bad idea at some point, but it's really rare that you'll have an amp failure like that, and from what I understand it's usually only a problem on vintage tube amps.

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