Strange out of phase issue - Gold Foil

photek

Popped a lovely Mojo Goldfoil in the neck position of my tele… of course it was out of phase.

Swapped the bridge pickup hot and ground and no sound at all from the bridge pickup, neck worked fine. Hmmm.

Swapped the bridge wires back and reversed the hot and ground on the gold foil. Perfect, in phase, sounding lovely…. Until I touched the cover of the gold foil which now buzzes like a bastard.

Swapped the GF wires back and no buzzing but out of phase.

What am I missing or do gold foil pickups need a specific polarity bridge pickup to pair with?!

Pic because it’s pretty:

PhilKing

Did you disconnect the grounding wire to the baseplate of the bridge pickup before you swapped the wires around?   Sounds like you didn't and I think that would give you the no sound issue.

PhilKing

btw, great looking Tele

photek

Ahh, it doesn’t have a separate ground on the baseplate, assuming it’s combined with the normal ground wire. I guess that means I can’t use that bridge pickup in phase with the GF?

Paul_C

You can swap the wires on the bridge pickup if you swap the wire that earths the base plate to the other wire.

photek

Ahh nice one, I will give that a go thanks both   

blueskunk

Lovely Tele. Good luck. Great place this for such advice. 

ICBM

You either need to swap the ground connection on the bridge pickup baseplate to the other eyelet, or separate the ground from the pickup completely, with a separate wire.

OilCityPickups

People always seem to get in a fix with Tele baseplate earths. There is no real reason the coil start or finish wire needs to be connected to the baseplate at the pickup end ... apart from ease of manufacture and neatness. Just snip that short connecting wire and solder a nice new earth wire between a pot back and the baseplate ... job done. 

photek

Thanks all I will sort it tonight, funny that I haven’t stumbled across this before in all these years, lucky I guess.

I knew I could count on the forum to help  

p90fool

OilCityPickups said:

People always seem to get in a fix with Tele baseplate earths. There is no real reason the coil start or finish wire needs to be connected to the baseplate at the pickup end ... apart from ease of manufacture and neatness. Just snip that short connecting wire and solder a nice new earth wire between a pot back and the baseplate ... job done. 

That's probably safer than potentially overheating the eyelet solder too. 

OilCityPickups

p90fool said:

OilCityPickups said:

People always seem to get in a fix with Tele baseplate earths. There is no real reason the coil start or finish wire needs to be connected to the baseplate at the pickup end ... apart from ease of manufacture and neatness. Just snip that short connecting wire and solder a nice new earth wire between a pot back and the baseplate ... job done. 

That's probably safer than potentially overheating the eyelet solder too. 

Absolutely ... 

Philly_Q

photek said:

Swapped the bridge wires back and reversed the hot and ground on the gold foil. Perfect, in phase, sounding lovely…. Until I touched the cover of the gold foil which now buzzes like a bastard.

Just to come back to that bit, the cover probably shares the (original) ground wire - like a Tele neck pickup.

photek

All sorted, snipped the baseplate ground wire and replaced with one running to the back of the volume pot. Sounds superb and no buzzing when touching the Goldfoil.

Thanks very much everyone