Noisy Telecaster

[q83]

Sweet mother of god, my project is 95% done. The telecaster body is complete, the neck is finished... but holy christ is this thing noisy. It's not at the not-grounded noise level quite, but it's not that far off. I've been testing it without a neck, but even so it's noisier than all of my other guitars, and even if I touch the bridge plate to further ground it, it's still fairly noisy.

I had a real hard time soldering this, as none of the stores near me sell solder flux. Whatever I soldered, I had to solder on top of stuff that was already soldered, or just pray. The wiring is fairly messy, and all the wires that are supposed to be grounded are more or less connected to the same spot. (it took me about 4 hours to wire this without any flux, and it wasn't easy Can anyone clue me in to how to solve this humming catastrophe?

My greatest appreciation for your time,

[thegarehanman]

My first piece of advice is find yourself some decent flux-core solder and redo all of your wiring. Also, is your cavity shielded and is your bridge grounded?

peace,

russ

[lovekraft]

Shielding a Tele™ (Guitarnuts)

[q83]

Yeah I found that page prior to my post lovekraft, but that site is how to improve an already properly wired Telecaster. And thegarehanman, my bridge is grounded as far as I know, there's a wire connecting it that's grounded to a pot. I'm going to try and rewire everything from scratch, wish me luck, but I doubt it's going to change much. Thanks for your advice though.

[Southpa]

Clean all the old connections. Grounding to pots can be real fun if its not all cleaned up and the metal prepped well. I melt the old solder on the pot and then wipe real quick with a piece of steel wool. Are all your grounds connected? Pretty much every wiring diagram I've seen doesn't show actual grounding points. Use the vol. pot as the central "star" grounding point. So pickup selector switch, pickups, bridge (however, tele bridge should already be connected to ground via bridge pup through the mounting screws) and output jack grounds should be soldered to the vol. pot casing. Also, link all other pot casings together and solder to the vol. pot casing.

Edited October 25, 2005 by Southpa

[q83]

I just cleaned up the wiring again. My girlfriend's father gave me some decent solder, so I fixed it up a bit. I'll try what you said (connecting the pots), Southpa, after I have it all assembled, as I'm sure the output jack isn't soldered that securely. Thanks for the advice though.

[1guitarslinger]

This may be stating the obvious, but make certain you don't have the hot and ground reversed on the output jack.

[1guitarslinger]

Well?

[Mickguard]

Well?

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Well, he ain't whining, so I'm guessing he's playing!