Ripthorn Posted October 18, 2008 Report Share Posted October 18, 2008 Hey guys, I just finished a sweet bass. It has a p/j set and piezo pickup in bridge. The wiring scheme is p/j blend into mag/piezo blend into master volume and master tone. The cavities are shielded, string ground, etc. The problem is that I have some annoying hum on the j pickup. The p and the piezo don't hum (wouldn't really expect them to), but the j does. The amount of hum varies as I change orientation (kind of expect that from electromagnetic theory). I was just wondering if anyone knows of a good way to get rid of the hum. It is not as low level as what I imagine a single coil should naturally produce, but I think my grounding all checks out. When I roll the tone off, the hum goes away, don't know if that helps. Anyway, I am just looking for a little help to make this thing a total knock-out. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psw Posted October 18, 2008 Report Share Posted October 18, 2008 Well...it sounds like typical single coil hum. With the piezo and all...is the bass by chance running through an onboard preamp to make it active. If so, this and the single coil can make things worse...also, potentially an effective radio receiver as in another recent post! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ripthorn Posted October 19, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 19, 2008 There is an onboard preamp. Is there anything I can do to maybe reduce the hum some? I am not getting any kind of radio-style content transmission, and the pickups are well-potted, so I doubt it is any kind of RF type reception. One other kind of odd thing: one time I turned the tone down to get rid of the hum, then when I turned it back up, the hum was dramatically better, almost non-existent. This could just be a single coil being a single coil, and if that is the case then I will just let it go. If not, I want to fix it, but c'est la vie as the french say. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psw Posted October 19, 2008 Report Share Posted October 19, 2008 Why I mention the preamp is that any noise from the SC pickup is amplified by the preamp...as a lot of this noise is high frequency, the tone control can filter a lot of this out. Potentially you could rig up a resistor and cap like a tone control circuit to the SC pickup so that when it is on, the highs and so the noise is filtered out... Other strategies could be the shielding and wiring (short as possible and preferably shielded) to ensure as clean a signal as possible, especially before the preamp... otherwise, could be a case of such is life! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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