Can someone please shed some light on this?

[bunt]

I work in quality control. The answer is yes. But that wasn't my point. My point was that depending on the polarity of the ground connection, you can either add hum or eliminate hum of a poorly shielded pup bu touching something that it is connected to. (bridge, strings, tuners.. metal stuff) You can also have "looping" problems associated with your house wiring, wherein completely disconnecting ground will actually eliminate the hum. Circuit grounds and earth grounds are different. Sometimes they are tied together, sometimes they are isolated from each other. But the ground polarity is why many amps have that ground switch on the back that reverses the polarity

 

[famous beagle]

I work in quality control. The answer is yes. But that wasn't my point. My point was that depending on the polarity of the ground connection, you can either add hum or eliminate hum of a poorly shielded pup bu touching something that it is connected to. (bridge, strings, tuners.. metal stuff) You can also have "looping" problems associated with your house wiring, wherein completely disconnecting ground will actually eliminate the hum. Circuit grounds and earth grounds are different. Sometimes they are tied together, sometimes they are isolated from each other. But the ground polarity is why many amps have that ground switch on the back that reverses the polarity

Again, this sounds logical too. But before I fixed the problem on my Tele, I encountered the same problem (increased buzzing when not touching the strings) everywhere I played it. And I played it in at least 6 different places I can think of off the top of my head. Since I "fixed" the problem (by connecting ground to the bridge), I've played in four different places with no issues.

I'm beginning to think I'll never really know what the deal is.