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Just picked up a project guitar that was void of all electronics for 30$ and I have come to the conclusion that this isn't working so well. There are 2 pickups, 2 volume pots, one tone and a 3 way switch.

Basically I have the 2 pickups going to their individual volume pots <the top right pot has the ground wire from the bridge soldered and the top left pot has a wire going to the back of the tone in an attempt to ground>
From the volume pots the signal goes to the 3 way switch and the switch goes to the tone and then to a TRS output jack with the ring and sleeve soldered together.

I've looked at schematics but they only further confused me. I can imagine there is a simple answer to this. I've tried multiple combinations of wires to wires and nothing seems to work.

Specifics about the hum:
-half of it goes away when I touch the strings.
-When I turn all the knobs to 0 the hum remains (and is still slightly affected by touching the strings)
-it's really annoying

The ground has to touch the strings via the posts of the bridge. Should be a bare wire running from the nearest post into the control cavity.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I'm still getting quite a bit of noise. It all goes away if I touch the tone pot or either end of the cable. touching any of the metal on the switch specifically gets a tremendously unpleasant sound too.

Make sure the output jack wires are not swapped?
I've done it before.

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Lol that may have been it. It was a tip ring sleeve output so the extra prong threw me off. Without the buzz I can now tell that there's an extremely low signal coming through. I stole the electronics out of a dean bass so the bass electronics in a guitar may not be good. Are 500k pots a bad fit?

Actually never mind. I took the tone pot out of the equation and it works fine. Must just be busted /: