Paul Marossy

Cool. I'm interested to hear about how well it works.

Put it after the buffer. Size is a good question. I would think that since it would be after the buffer that a 250K or 100K audio pot should work.

Well, there you go.

There are some source-date codes on the pots. That would give you an idea of whan it was made. Check out his link: http://home.provide.net/~cfh/pots.html

Correct on all counts.

There's no such thing as a booster pedal that has no gain. It can't boost anything without some amount of gain. Otherwise, it would just be a unity gain buffer or something like that. Anyway, yeah, any "clean booster" should do the job.

Interesting. Is that really a 1uF cap on the tone control, or was that supposed to be a 0.1uF?

Cool, glad you got it fixed.

So, do small/skinny guys hum less? Does Leslie West hum less than he used to? Well, I am not a big guy. I'm kinda skinny, and I have never had much of these sorts of problems with guitars. Hmm...

Yeah, this was an interesting discussion. I learned a couple of new things, too.

Read this page: http://www.audereaudio.com/FAQ_PUNoise.htm - I didn't realize that we have a voltage at the power line frequency from power lines being imposed on our bodies. This guy measured more than 11V peak on his own body. So there is also a voltage potential thing and capacitive coupling. Very interesting new piece of information I didn't have before. Kind of wild that 10% of the line voltage in my walls is being picked up by my body just sitting here typing this. So this means that you are lowering the voltage potential between you and the ground on your guitar when you touch the strings, which has the effect of acting like a capacitor to ground in the sense that it makes the noise go away (thinking more in terms of RFI). But the buzzing is a classic symptom of a guitar not being properly grounded and/or shielded. So I am still baffled by why coated strings would cause this problem. Maybe because it increases the voltage potential between the player and ground? That must be it.

The human body is not a "giant ball of hum that needs grounding". All of the man made crap around us is what generates all the EMI that our guitars pick up and then gets amplified by our amplifiers. The human body absorbs it (maybe to ill effect), it does not "radiate" it, we are not radio towers emitting EMI. Where did you ever get this idea from? That is why there is all this concern about living too close to power substations and that cell phones might cause brain cancer and that sort of thing. Our bodies are more like a capacitor with stored energy, or under the right circumstances, a conductor. In the latter case, it can be deadly, as in being electrocuted. I've seen what that can do to someone, people who died from a massive voltage/current - their arms were like charcoal or part of their bodies were burnt to a crisp. It's not pretty. And rubber soled shoes are not a safeguard, stuff can arc and kill you anyway, it just finds the path of least resistance to ground which can travel through your body even though your rubber soled shoes are supposed to be an insulator. Anyway, the fact that the buzz/hum goes away when you touch the strings means that your body is acting like a capacitor to ground. Although it may not necessarily literally grounded, it has the same effect. The fact you can touch the guitar strings with rubber soled shoes on and make the buzz go away doesn't mean anything. Your body is just acting like an air core capacitor that has enough capacitance to kill that buzzing sound. Also, one needs to make a distinction between "buzz" and "hum". Hum is generally 60Hz mains noise. Buzz is typically from poorly rectified power supplies like wall warts, and is a 120Hz ripple on the power supply due to no filter capacitor being used to smooth it out after rectification, or one that is too small to be useful when used for audio applications.

No, hum comes from the guitar picking up EMI which is all around it - things like motors, air conditioners, wall warts (which have transformers inside them which radiate lots of EMI), CRTs, etc. Single coil pickups don't need your body to hum, they do it all on their own. You don't have to be touching anything, they will do it all on their own. Your example about an amp with a loose cord plugged into it is not the same thing as the grounding in a guitar, and the human body is definitely NOT the source of hum in an electric guitar.

I believe so. Touching the portion of the string between the ball end and the bridge saddle removes the buzz, so the coating is not on the whole string, just the playing portion. I have my doubts about that. Why would you be getting a buzz with that brand of string then? I mean if the bridge is grounded, and if as you say, the strings are exposed at the ball ends then they should be having contact with ground and you shouldn't be getting a buzz at all. See what I am saying? Not trying to be argumentative, it just doesn't make sense to me.

Yes, but is the string exposed at the ball ends? I doubt that they are, and that would mean that the strings are not grounded. The buzz goes away when you touch the tuners because you become the path to ground, or maybe more like a big capacitor to ground.

You know, the more that I think about this, the more enigmatic it is. In a regular guitar string scenario, if the bridge is grounded, then there shouldn't be any buzzing... in theory. I guess because the strings have a coating on them, they are now acting like antennas and picking up noise (EMI I assume), which would be happening apparently because they are not really grounded to the bridge and therefore that noise can't be shunted to ground as it normally would be.

The only way that you would win on that idea is to make a LOT of them and know that you have buyers that will take them off of your hands for more than it cost you to have them made. Your profit margin would be small, and you would make money by selling in quantity. That's how it is on stuff like that. I personally don't think anyone would pay $49 for a pickup switch that they can get for $8 at the local Guitar Center. I'm sure you could sell a few of them to people who want to burn some money. I could see maybe $15-20 for a "historically accurate" switch, but any more than that is really pushing it, IMO.

Me, either. And I honestly don't think it's really possible.

Maybe you could find a way to build this into your guitar: http://sci-toys.com/scitoys/scitoys/radio/...nute_radio.html

Interesting. Good to know that about these strings.

Take a string off and use a continuity tester to check that. Or use a DMM to measure resistance from one end to the other. A normal string would be very close to zero ohms.

It kind of looks like the same wood they use for the "blonde" Fender guitars. Isn't that ash, or "swamp ash"? Something like that.

Interesting. I've never heard of this in the eight years I have been on various guitar related forums.

I'm not sure that there is a cure for the pop. I was just wondering how big of one it was. Doesn't sound like it's too bad.

Cool. I like the way you did the transistor switching. Does it pop when you switch it?