Paul Marossy

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

I did come up with one more question though. In order to add a volume control to the system would I just put the pot before the signal reaches the piezo buffer? and also what size pot would be suitable?

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.

cool. i dated the pots and i believe they are cts pots. week 17 of 1987. sweet..

Well, there you go.

im not sure how to date it, but i believe mine is an older one. did the pics shed any light on things?

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

If my memory serves me correctly, the RAT was the inspiration for the development of the 'Millenium Bypass' allowing cheaper components to be used while still providing true bypass and an LED indicator (without the circuitry, you would need a 3PDT switch instead of just 2P2T)

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.

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

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.

Think about the fallacy in the reasoning that by touching the strings you are conducting the hum to ground through your body...

Why would attaching a capacitor-to-ground to an already grounded point improve matters?

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.

This is because the purpose of the string ground is to ground the source of the hum - you!

You can prove this by plugging into an amp,

note the difference between touching and not touching the strings,

then - with absolutely no contact with the guitar - touch another ground point

(a socket on the amp would be fine) and hear the hum diminish to the same extent.

The player is a giant ball of hum and needs grounded.

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.

Yes, but is the string exposed at the ball ends?

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.

My understanding is that the coating is preventing my body from joining the ground circuit, allowing me to act as an antenna radiating interference into the guitar (same scenario as with an ungrounded bridge).

The entire metal string is grounded--I know this because the ball-ends are touching the bridge, and because touching the tuners removes the buzz. It's the coating on the playing length of the string that keeps me from touching ground. The wraps at the far ends of the string are not coated, and touching the far ends of the string removes the buzz.

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.

Just to continue this investigation... as the strings are breaking in, the buzz is getting quieter. Perhaps the coating is breaking down and I am making more contact with the grounded part of the string.

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.

I have never been able to shield a guitar to the point of eliminating all noise.

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

But what if i wanted to pickup radio stations, what would i need to do for that.

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

I tested the string with my multimeter. Set to the 20k range, with a probe on each end of the string (playing part of the string where the coating is), I read infinite resistance.

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.

Cold solder joints and especially those that have bit of flux still in them can act like a semi-conducter and give a diode effect.

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?