jtruck Posted February 23, 2005 Report Share Posted February 23, 2005 (edited) Hey guys first post. Great website here. My question is: I just bought a set of vintage noiseless pickups for my mex fat strat w/humbucker. I couldn't stand the pickups in my neck and middle positions. I swaped out the old pickups for the noiseless ones and I basically just cut the hot and ground wire to the old pickups and soldered the existing wire to the new ones. I covered the bridge between the wires with electrical tape. Is this the right way to do it? Is there a more effective way? The pickups sound good but they have a little hum when strings are not being played. As soon as I touch the strings the hum goes away. I am almost certain this is a grounding problem. How would i fix? Oh one more thing my volume pot is crackling when i change the volume. what is the fix for this? Sorry for the newbie questions but your help is appreciated. Thanks, Jesse Edited February 23, 2005 by jtruck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitarfrenzy Posted February 23, 2005 Report Share Posted February 23, 2005 With the Fender Vintage Noisless pickups I've installed, all of them came with the wiring diagram, resistor, cap, and pots. To really get the benifit from them you need to wire it up just like the schematic you got with it. It's kind of an odd wiring but if done correctly, they are some very hot pickups, with virtually no noise. So my bet is that you need to redo your guitar again, this time using the parts that came with your Pickups. Good luck.. MaTT Vinson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtruck Posted February 23, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 23, 2005 I bought just the pickups. It didnt come with the rest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitarfrenzy Posted February 23, 2005 Report Share Posted February 23, 2005 let me guess Ebay? We'll your missing some parts, not saying that you can't get it to sound as good, but I'm sure they used parts that compliment the pickups. If I remember correctly there is a 1 M pot, and two 500k pots, which is unusual for a strat, but sounds great because it's made for those pickups. Hopefully you can find a schematic of the pickups and order some parts to make them sound their best. Here's something I found at Guitarelectronics.com Fender Vintage Noisless Set. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crafty Posted February 23, 2005 Report Share Posted February 23, 2005 The little bit of hum is not a grounding problem. If it goes away when you touch the strings, your string ground is working properly. More likely the problem is when you reused the wires from the old pickups and soldered them to the new wires, you made a very effective path for noise to enter the system. Try shortening the wires a bit and see if that helps some of the hum go away. Shielding the cavity should also cut down the noise quite a bit, too. If your volume pot is scratchy, it's bad. Get a new one. Try to find the stock wiring components that frenzy listed above and the guitar will sound even better. The Delta-Tone system Fender uses with this setup sounds really cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jnewman Posted February 23, 2005 Report Share Posted February 23, 2005 (edited) The pickups sound good but they have a little hum when strings are not being played. As soon as I touch the strings the hum goes away. I am almost certain this is a grounding problem. How would i fix? You're right, this is a grounding problem, but not in the way you think - it's not the guitar that's having a grounding problem, is YOU that's having a grounding problem. Here's you: you're 150-200 (or something) of, basically, electrolyte filled water, which is very conductive, and your body is not grounded. You're a great big antenna for any kind of electric field, and the wires in the guitar (even if your pickups are absolutely silent, there are still other wires that can pick up noise) are picking up the noise that your body is focusing right next to it - hence the hum. When you touch the strings, on the other hand, you're touching something metal that is perfectly grounded - your strings - and so you become grounded. All of a sudden, you're not a focus for electromagnetic radiation anymore, and the hum goes away. If you shield every cavity in the guitar and shield every wire, you might get this to mostly go away, but I don't think I've ever heard a guitar that doesn't have this problem if you turn it up loud enough. More likely the problem is when you reused the wires from the old pickups and soldered them to the new wires, you made a very effective path for noise to enter the system. ← Eh... it's pretty hard to ruin copper wire, and a single solder joint can't really form a path for noise to enter the system... I doubt there's really anything wrong with your wiring, and I bet the hum was there before you put in the new pups, you just never noticed it because strats hum - it was only with the "noiseless" single coils that did not render your entire guitar noiseless that it seemed odd and got noticed. I have a pretty new (2001, I think) stock Fender American Stratocaster. There's a lot of hum normally - some of it goes away when I touch the strings. Even if I switch to the humbucker (it's a Texas Special and has a PG+ bucker in the bridge) there's still a little bit of this hum. I could be completely wrong, of course, but this is something a lot of people run in to, and this is the answer that seems (to me at least) to best fit with the physics of electronics. Edited February 23, 2005 by jnewman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtruck Posted February 23, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 23, 2005 I am going to go home tonight and do some tinkering!. Thanks for all of your help. I'll let you know what i come up with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lovekraft Posted February 23, 2005 Report Share Posted February 23, 2005 If your volume pot is scratchy, it's bad. Get a new one. Jeez, doesn't anybody know how to clean a pot any more? Go to Radio Shack, buy a spray can of TV tuner cleaner (not contact cleaner), spray the pot, roll it from stop to stop a few times and get on with your life - it's not like working musicians have the time or the cash to replace a pot every time it gets scratchy!! If you shield every cavity in the guitar and shield every wire, you might get this to mostly go away, but I don't think I've ever heard a guitar that doesn't have this problem if you turn it up loud enough.That makes it sound like shielding a Strat is not particularly worthwhile - shielding a Strat will reduce the noise to near inaudible levels if done correctly, and should be required for anyone taking Strat Electronics 101 (it makes that much difference!). It's not that difficult - see the "Quieting The Beast" Tutorial at Guitar Nuts. Life is too short to play an unshielded Fender! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crafty Posted February 23, 2005 Report Share Posted February 23, 2005 You can still buy a can of TV Tuner Cleaner? I thought they outlawed that stuff a long time ago. My bad. BTW, when I was talking about reusing the old wires and soldering them to the new wires, I wasn't talking about the soldering connections. I was talking about the LENGTH of the wires. Wiring runs should be as short as possible or you run the risk of them becoming a huge antenna for noise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lovekraft Posted February 24, 2005 Report Share Posted February 24, 2005 Yes, you can buy it all day long at Da Shak - tuner cleaner. You probably shouldn't bathe in it, but it's mostly mineral oil, and compared to Deoxit® and the rest of the newer stuff, it's pretty harmless (and it won't destroy conductive plastic pots like Deoxit does). It should be part of every tech's tool kit! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitarfrenzy Posted February 24, 2005 Report Share Posted February 24, 2005 Speaking of cleaning pots, he makes a good point. You really have to be careful what you use. There was a time when the pots you'd get was made really good, but nowdays you can ruin them if you spray them with the wrong kind of contact cleaner. I found out the hard way a month ago, when my original Line 6 Axsys2 combo amp was acting up and when I'd turn the volume it would make loud scratching noises (not very cool when your onstage in front of hundreds of people ) and cut out really bad, so I decided to get out the good old contact cleaner one day and fix it. We'll, needless to say I just sprayed all of the pots thinking I was doing it some good, lol.. only bad thing was that I ended up with way more problems than I started out with. To make a long story short, I had to reorder all new pots because the amp was going crazy since every pot was ruined. You don't realize how important the pots are on that digital amp until they start acting up spiratically causing effects to come on and off, master volume to fluxuate, etc. etc. lol They told me that I wasn't suppose to use cleaners on it since they was made a certain way and that just blowing them with bottled air was the best solution. I'm sure that guitar electronic pots are built to take a little more abuse than these in my amp, but it sure helps to find out before you try it, or at least have some backup parts to fix it so that you don't have any downtime due to problems that might arise. Basically I was out of an amp for 2 weeks waiting for backordered parts, specific pots that only work in that amp!!! Moral of the story.. look before you leap.. lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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