Epiphone Les Paul-100

[Gingah]

As on many cheap guitars (and expensive too), there are buzzing (electrical noise present when the guitarist himself is not in contact with the strings, and work as the grounding), also in my Epiphone Les Paul-100 (which cost me roughly 500 bucks, so not a high-end guitar so to speak). I've looked inside it, it's wired with two single-coil epiphone humbucker pickups, running to each of their volume knob, and supposedly a tone pot for each (makes no difference at all in anything when turned to high or low) and a small green capacitor each (haven't managed to see it's specifications) and then of course to the jack.

Now, when the gain is as much as halfway up on my Roland 30x-cube amp, it is very noticeable that there is noise when I am not in contact with the strings (a lot of the noise also goes away when I am in contact with the jack cable of course, or even when I am touching one of the screws at the back of the guitar). To try to remove some of the noise the cheap way, I took some copper wire from the strings between the brigde and the saddle to the jack, but still the noise only lowers when I am in contact with the string itself.

I read on some site (forgot to save the link :/) that the grounding wire from the bridge on this guitar is not connected anywhere, but dumped underneath it, and thought that I could perhaps fix it that way, but I just got new strings, and would hate taking them off if that rumor was false. Could anyone confirm if this actually is the case with the ground wire from the bridge?

And any suggestions on how to lower the noise would be very much appreciated, also comments on what wire is what in this guitar (I think the white wire on the jack is the ground, and the black is the hot, but not really sure, and don't want to destroy anything) would be nice.

[Acousticraft]

The secret to quiet guitars is fully shielded cavities lined with copper or aluminium foil tape. The cavity shielding should be grounded as well to the back of the pots.

Im assuming you have a Tuneomatic, if so there should be a ground wire going thru a drilled hole from the control cavity and connected to one of the bushes for bridge or tail piece mounting.

You could check with a multimeter whether there is continuity between the bridge and pot or not for a start.

The inside centre of the jack socket is ground and the clip is hot.

Edited January 26, 2008 by Acousticraft

[Telesque]

The secret to quiet guitars is fully shielded cavities lined with copper or aluminium foil tape.

Can anyone comment on the accuracy/effectiveness of this? I've seen plenty of copper tape for sale to shield guitar cavities with, but I've never heard of aluminum shielding tape. If so, wouldn't this ultimately be the same as high heat foil flue tape for ductwork that you could get for cheap (compared to copper tape) at any decent hardware store?

[Acousticraft]

Ive just shielded the cavities of my Strat with Aluminium foil tape and its silent. As long as it is conductive it works fine and ground it to the back of the pots. I used a small screw with a washer and stripped the wire back a little wrapped it around the screw and tightened it down thru the foil.

Yes its much cheaper and easier to get than copper tape and good for doing big cavity areas like a Strat.