Pickup Noisy When Touched - Strat

[bbrocks]

I have a 50s reissue strat from about 1996. When a live pickup in touched it produces a static hum. When not touched the guitar is quiet. I've visually checked the wiring and everything looks fine. I know this doesn't mean much. I am looking for some pointers on where I should start my troubleshooting.

[GregP]

The guitar's wiring may "look" fine on a quick visual inspection, but you'll need to have another look. Somewhere in there, you've got what "should" be a ground wire that's not actually making it to ground.

Last time this happened on my guitar, it was from my shielding material-- while I was very careful to make the whole thing continuous, I somehow forgot to solder an extra wire going from the shield to ground. That's just one example-- in any event, something's not making it to ground. Trace the route-- wherever the loop is, it's connected to your bridge, which is touching your strings. So follow the lead from the bridge to wherever it goes... does THAT spot lead to ground? If not, you have a loop.

Even with all the wires seeming in place, my understanding is that they won't always go to ground. If the path of least resistance isn't ground, it'll also create a loop. The best solution to avoid this is to ground everything with a "star grounding" scheme. This means taking every single ground, connected them up to one place (the "star" is often just a metal washer), and then from the "star" to the ground lug of your output jack.

Greg

[bbrocks]

The guitar's wiring may "look" fine on a quick visual inspection, but you'll need to have another look. Somewhere in there, you've got what "should" be a ground wire that's not actually making it to ground.

Last time this happened on my guitar, it was from my shielding material-- while I was very careful to make the whole thing continuous, I somehow forgot to solder an extra wire going from the shield to ground. That's just one example-- in any event, something's not making it to ground. Trace the route-- wherever the loop is, it's connected to your bridge, which is touching your strings. So follow the lead from the bridge to wherever it goes... does THAT spot lead to ground? If not, you have a loop.

Even with all the wires seeming in place, my understanding is that they won't always go to ground. If the path of least resistance isn't ground, it'll also create a loop. The best solution to avoid this is to ground everything with a "star grounding" scheme. This means taking every single ground, connected them up to one place (the "star" is often just a metal washer), and then from the "star" to the ground lug of your output jack.

Greg

Thanks for the advice, I took it and followed your direction and it led me tot he pickup covers. The owner had replaced the pickup covers with cheap gold looking covers. Apparently something in the gold foil was shorting out the circuit. I removed the covers and the buzz was gone. Now I notice that the bottom tone control isn't quite working so I will continue to check that out.

[GregP]

I've never had a tone control that worked in any way worth using. I wouldn't worry about it TOooo much, as long as it's not deteriorating your signal. Just leave it turned up.

One of my guitars "feels" like it's really just on/off, even though I've confirmed that the wiper is indeed varying the amount of high-frequency bleed... but you don't notice a real difference in tone except between "full up" and "full down," so I never really bother with it.

Greg