Pickup Cavity Ground Wires Not Grounding Anything?

[DalyTek]

Does the hum go away when you touch metal parts on the guitar? If so, it's probably a missing ground.
If not, it's probably interference or maybe a ground loop. How about a picture or a diagram of the wiring in the control cavity?

[Trem]

Ah, i have another suggestion, make sure your input jack is tight, as in tighten it to itself so that it has no play at all.

This can create buzz or hum, happened to me. I seemed tight but i re-tightened it to itself with it out of the guitar ( dish type jack ) and problem was solved. It seemed like it was tight enough at casual checking but it wasn't.

As far as shielding project went, what i did is go down to fry's electronics and bought all new wire, including new shielded pair for the output jack, the best i could find. I shielded the entire guitar except for the trem cavity with copper foil tape. Including pickup cavities - dual humbucker guitar (actually think it made the most difference) as well as input jack cavity, toggle switch cavity - connected them all by wires soldered to the tape so there was continuity between them all.

Also tape the back of control covers, and make sure there are some tabs of the tape that overlap out of the cavity to touch the tape on the covers so it creates a total encasement of the innards. I then grounded everything to the volume pot i tried star grounding whatever theories - no dice- what worked was old fashioned just putting all grounds to the volume pot. I did not run any ground from the cavity tape to the volume pot as i figured it was redundant.

The volume pot was grounded by touching the casing or shaft of the pot, or mine was (check everything with a multimeter) i just wanted it as direct and less points of solder/worry as possible. I also twisted any long runs of wire IE: my toggle switch is separate from the control cavity and is a long run, all the wires running back and forth i twisted them firmly together.

YMMV, some may not need it at all for whatever reason, or not notice or mind a little noise being used to it. But all i can say is that in 25 years i've never had a passive guitar this quiet. I was always used to just having some buzz or noise. Well now with computers and recording and using headphones and stuff noise is a lot more noticeable. This fixed it.

With the axe fx which is pretty quiet by itself the shielded guitar made zero noise or hum, and i sit in front of a 24 inch old flat tube sony crt which i love, but it creates a ton of interference.

I had to sell my axe fx, but i still have my mp-1 and i use it in the same spot with no noise reduction - my hush unit is in a box somewhere, i just face away when recording and it's quiet as possible. That's about as good of a testament to the fact of how good it works when done right that it can get i think, cause if i take any stock guitar and try it, the difference is blatant.

I've thought about it after doing this and think that the paint is used number one as a cost cutting measure as taping every production guitar off would be costly and time consuming. But i now feel firmly that taping it off like this is the proper and best solution possible, and seems to be relatively overlooked. Probably much to the happiness of the companies that make noise reduction products.

It may not be the end all for every ones solution with their gear and stuff but i think starting at the source and cutting out that equation first seems to be the most logical approach.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, heh, but it was a revelation to me and am pretty happy about the outcome, i haven't back to backed it against an emg guitar, i prefer passives and play them, 99.999 % of the time, but i would say it's at least as quiet i guess.. can't really get anymore quiet in my situation but i'll have to do a torture test in front of my sony radiation box just to see

[Joezuu]

Does the hum go away when you touch metal parts on the guitar? If so, it's probably a missing ground.
If not, it's probably interference or maybe a ground loop. How about a picture or a diagram of the wiring in the control cavity?

Yeah, it goes away when touching the strings, pots, bridge, anything metal which, as you say, suggests a ground problem. I'll post a pic of the innards soon.

@Trem

Thanks for the revelation! I'll probably end up shielding it entirely, like you say. I even have a nearby fry's! Plus, a guitar never feels like its really mine until I've done some major modding.

[dulrich1227]

reading through the thread was going to mention the input jack as well, had a similar issue with an old charvel, after shielding it like crazy...and still haveing some buzz/hum.. it was the input jack.. Give the "inside part a squeez" to tighten it up as well as making sure its screwed in tight to the body...