I recently bought a new pre-wired control plate for my Squier Affinity Telecaster. I also bought some new pickups (Tonerider Alnico II Blues). These are to be wired in a standard tele 3-way switch configuration. Both the control plate and the pickups came with a wiring diagram that appears identical and also matches with what I saw online. I have 2 wires from each pickup that I have to solder to the control plate and I know where I have to solder them.
However, the pre-wired control plate has one extra yellow wire with a loose end that is not on the wiring diagram (I’m holding it in my hand in the attached photo).
My question is what to do with this wire? Am I supposed to solder it to something? Or should I just leave it unconnected? Or should I remove it? According to the wiring diagram it seems superfluous, unless I have misread something in the diagram.
It looks like one end loose and the other is soldered to the body of the potentiometer. If so, Major is correct. It is just an extra ground wire.
You will found your pickups to the potentiometer as well and it appears the plug clip has its own grounding wire already correctly attached, so you don’t need it.
Maybe some setups don’t have enough wire from the pickups and that is used? It is easier to solder to a wire than a potentiometer body, but I think you are better off soldering just like the diagram and removing that wire. Less risk of introducing noise.
Edit: Oh, another thought. If you have a metal lined cavity, you would solder this wire to the lining.
Sorry, here’s a better resolution wiring diagram (see link below). As Majik said, it’s not clear in my photo as I posted it low res.
I also thought that it might be an extra ground but I thought that this was only needed in the 4-way switch option for wiring a tele, and not the 3-way. I think I’ll just remove it as other than this extra wire my control plate it corresponds to the two diagrams I have.
