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i have a hum/ground problem in a tele, when i touch the metal jacket of the jack lead connected to my guitar it goes away, but touching the control plate makes it worse. touching the hardtail makes no audible difference.
any ideas where the problem may lie?
it is a problem specific to the guitar, other guitars with the same lead/amp work fine.

ok, the jack connections were the wrong way round, now heres the problem,
when i touch the control plate or the neck pickup case the hum disapears.

[Jeid]

have you grounded the bridge?

i dont think it is grounded, i did check by holding a wire from the control plate to the bridge and it helped a little. its much more tollerable now in any case.

[Jeid]

grounding the bridge is always a problem for people with tele's. When i replaced the bridge pickup in my telecaster, i forgot to ground the bridge. silly boy. Run a wire from the back of a pot, and slip the other end of the wire under the bridge(on some guitars there is a hole drilled for it) and voila, no more buzz.... until you take your hand off the strings of course

[The Byre]

. . . and don't use balanced (i.e. stereo) cable as a guitar lead.

my strat with single coils doesnt hum even if i take my hands off the strings.
is this just all the metal hardware on a tele acting as an aerial?

[The Byre]

Like the man said above, you have probably not grounded (earthed) the bridge. Get the old multi-meter out (no multi-meter? Shame on you!) and test that you have contact between ALL metal parts of the guitar AND that they are connected to the cable shield wire.

If you cannot beg, steal or borrow a multi-meter, get any piece of cable and connect them all up one by one, until the buzzing goes away. Now you know which bit needs to be earthed / grounded and all you have to do is lift the plate (or whatever it happens to be) and put in a nice piece of cable that is not visable from the outside.

This problem occures because either the player is using stereo cable or because someone has 'improved' the guitar with new pick-ups or something else and has not connected all the parts back together again.

Originally Posted by The Byre

Like the man said above, you have probably not grounded (earthed) the bridge. Get the old multi-meter out (no multi-meter? Shame on you!) and test that you have contact between ALL metal parts of the guitar AND that they are connected to the cable shield wire.

If you cannot beg, steal or borrow a multi-meter, get any piece of cable and connect them all up one by one, until the buzzing goes away. Now you know which bit needs to be earthed / grounded and all you have to do is lift the plate (or whatever it happens to be) and put in a nice piece of cable that is not visable from the outside.

This problem occures because either the player is using stereo cable or because someone has 'improved' the guitar with new pick-ups or something else and has not connected all the parts back together again.

you've mis-read the thread.
the bridge is grounded, which means when playing the strings are in contact with fingers, and therefore the whole guitar is being grounded via touch.
thats what "the guy" said.

[Doc Ascension]

Yeah but your guitar isn't meant to be grounded by YOU dude! It's meant to be grounded by your guitar lead....

Otherwise, when you pick up the guitar and you act as the ground, the electricity flows through you - this means if any electrical things are incorrectly grounded (dodgy plugs, amps, etc) - you = dead.

What I suggest is looking up some wiring diagrams for your pup config, www.projectguitar.com should help -

Basically, you want to ground the bridge, the pups obviously, the pots and also the jack at the side - this means a ground wire should run in circuit with all these components. If you get a hum that cancels when you touch the guitar then you are still not properly grounded!