Star grounding
A wiring scheme in which every ground connection in the instrument runs to a single common point instead of daisy-chaining between components.
Ground loops occur when current can take more than one path back to the same reference point, and the resulting differences in potential show up as hum. Star grounding avoids that by bringing every ground lead, from pickups, pots, bridge and jack, to one point, so no component sits between another and the ground. It is the standard recommendation for noisy guitars and pairs naturally with cavity shielding, though it cannot fix hum caused by single-coil pickups picking up magnetic fields.
Example: A rewired guitar whose ground wires all converge on the back of one pot, rather than hopping from pot to pot, uses star grounding.
See also
Related
- PageGround
- PageGround loop
- PageShielding
- PageActive pickup
- PageAlnico
- PageBlade pickup
- PageAaron Dessner
- PageAce Frehley