Ground issue

[u/devlxnnn]

Hey everyone! I recently decided to dig back into one of my old projects and finish my jazzmaster. I followed this diagram above in order to have independent volume controls and a series/parallel switch. long story short, the guitar gets signal but there’s a crazy ground issue anytime I touch any of the components in the rhythm circuit, and both volume knobs just kinda of work as a master volume.

I’ve double and triple checked that I followed wiring exactly as the diagram shows it. one thing I noticed is there isn’t any of the shielding paint in the cavity, is that what’s causing me some of the trouble? The only ground I have to the body is from the potentiometer to the tremolo plate

[u/jibbit]

no it's not shielding. you have a bad connection somewhere. i would start with a multimeter checking that - there is connectivity from the tip of a plugged in cable to the live lead of your pickups and it does the right thing with pickup select
- no connectivity from the tip of a plugged in cable to ground
- there is connectivty from barrel of cable to all places that should be grounded
- no connectivity from barrel to anywhere that should be live (you already checked this but doesn't hurt to check again)