Dumb grounding issue

[adamrobertt]

I have a partsmaster. It's nice - Warmoth neck, AV65 pickups, Mastery bridge and vibrato, etc.

Only issue I had was the knobs were a few millimeters proud of the pickguard, which irked my OCD. So today when I was changing strings, I decided to pop the guard (partially) off, stick some spare nuts I had on the pots below the pickguard, and tighten back up. Worked like a charm, the knobs are now flush with the guard. Cool!

Except now it sounds like the guitar has a loose ground. I guess there are two possibilities - I broke a ground connection when I was fiddling around inside, or the fact that the pots aren't directly contacting the metal shield on the back of the guard is the issue. (I have one of those full guard metal shields like the AV65 guitars do).

Thing is, the nuts and washers (that are securing the pots to the guard) are still contacting the metal plate. I thought this would be enough to retain electrical continuity. Am I wrong about that?

[Dieca]

Thing is, the nuts and washers (that are securing the pots to the guard) are still contacting the metal plate. I thought this would be enough to retain electrical continuity. Am I wrong about that?

They should be, if you have a multimeter check the ground on your pots for continuity and you'll be able to tell for sure. If you don't have one it will be really useful for diagnosing this problem and they're usually pretty cheap. You could also grab a bit of wire and a couple of alligator clips and try connecting grounding points together to try and find that missing ground.