Grounding problem.

My Bc Rich Neck thru has a grounding problem.
when I turn on my OD or my amp's dirty channel there is alot of noise. If I touch the base of the pickup selector or my jackplate it reduces the noise dramatically. Also If I touch my amp's toggle switch, the noise is gone.
I know it's the guitar cause my Peavey w/ EMGs is dead silent. I have resoldered what appeared to be shady grouning joints, but no luck. I am pretty confident in my solderiong skills, but I've come to a stoppage point.
Is it the pickups? Should I just take it to a tech?

If the wiring is wrong to begin with, resoldering won't fix it. Take a look at the wiring tips at Guitar Nuts. Since you have good soldering skills, you might as well do it yourself. You can save some money, and maybe even your own life.

All the wiring is fine. I even removed the tailpiece bushing and the ground seemed to be making good contact.
I considered eliminating the grounding loops, but with such a daunting task, I followed some instructions on shielding and glued some aluminum foil in the electronic components cavity. And what do you know, the noise is gone!! All of it! There still is some noise when I crank the amp, but that's normal. Thanks for reminding me of that page, I didn't go there first cause I remembered it was just strat stuff. But it turned out to be a big help.

Hey guys.

I've just read the site about shielding guitars - was wondering if those that have done it have any additional advice.

In particular, I'm in England and the site is obviously American. What kind of glue did you use to stick the aluminium foil down? Are all the wires called the same thing in the UK as the USA?

I thought I might give it a try. It's only on a squire strat, but the hum is gross. I guess most people would tell me to buy a proper axe but my budget can only stretch to some tin foil at the moment. I'm quite looking forward to taking it apart and looking inside properly as well.

Cheers
JE

John

The general priciple is that:

"Shielding will help with BUZZ but not HUM - only hum-cancelling pickups will cure this.

Most single-coil guitars do pick up some noise" as someone succinctly put it.

If you can get the foil in the cavity correctly ;) (i'm klutzy with that) then you should be OK using superglue,I'm using Loctite superglue,and it seems to work adequately for most guitar based work,except woodwork-some prefer other types of glue. I sheilded my Ibanez a long while back using those foil dishes pies come in (Tescos)and cheapo Sglue. Haven't had much of a problem with hum so i don't generally use sheilding.

Double check the earth wire (US=ground wire=same thing) that runs to the string claw in the tremelo cavity and be sure that all the earth connections are soldered correctly.

Most UK/US terms seem to be the same/similar,after all, Yanks invented the Electric Guitar so we copied the terms.

Squire Strats can be perfectly good instruments,if you like it or want to tinker ,good luck.

Guitarnuts is a fine site and it pays to go back and keep rereading it..i'm off there just now.

Cheers.

I used carpenter's glue and it worked great.
If you are a bit clumsy with the foil I would recommend aluminum tape, not the cheap stuff but the one that actually looks like aluminum.

Hey, thanks for those tips. I'm still trying to build my confidence enough to start messing around with the wiring of my beautiful instrument, but I consider myself fairly competent!!

Yeah, I think the problem I have is buzz and not hum, but really it could be descibed as either. Fairly unbearable at high gain/volume, but quitens when I put my fingers on the strings. I checked ground/earth wire on the tremelo - all OK there, so I think i'll go ahead with the operation.

James - it sounds like the foil you used was quite thick? I'm thinking it doesn't want to be too thick or it will interfere when trying to screw the pick guard back on.

I agree that the Guitarnuts site is awesome. The electric shock section scared me a little bit though. Apart from that, I started wanting to try loads of the modifications!!

Start with the simple stuff first, and work up though, I think.

Thanks for your input
JE

Originally posted by JohnEve
...The electric shock section scared me a little bit though...

The reason this Tech Talk forum was started, A Shocking Situation, might be worth reading again.

I just reread that linked post Lordathestrings and it is indeed scary.

I stay away from the HT,usually, but (recently) had a cheap guitar that was "fritzing" through the amp- intermitent earthing and vol.pot (bought both dirt cheap so..)

Anyway, I plug this thing in and it's still intermittent,[being lazy] touched the metal handle "retainer" ,which I've since found is connected to the amp's earth by the handle retaining bolts!, of the amp (squier15) and *tingle* luckilly not ZAP.
Needless to say 5 mins later that gtr was earthed -solidly ..and the amp has yet to be seen to,but, I won't be selling it like that.

mesabooger thanks for the foil advice.

John,that pie-dish foil is ok and will fit it's just difficult to make it "conform" to the contours of the pickup rout.I'd go with mesabooger on this and get the proper foil.

http://www.stewmac.com has that foil,reasonable postage and delivery times to the UK too.

Take it a step at a time and you'll be OK,if in doubt just ask...people here have forgotten an awful lot about electronics,i mean they know an awful lot ;).

2 yrs or so ago I couldn't wire a plug properly ,now...I can remember how to sometimes.

Cheers.


[Edited by James8831 on 07-08-2002 at 08:11 AM]

Thanks Lord, I too have done dumb things when I was a teen. I bought this PA from a guy and used it as my amp.
The ground prong had been hacked so it could fit into any socket. I was playing a cheapy gig and was wearing sandals.
the floor was cement and one of my sandals slipped off. I tell you, I was jumping around from the shocks. I thought it was silly and funny then, but later realized how much grave danger I was in. Thanks for the reminder.

I'm gonna go downstairs and check all of my connections in my studio now.

The guitarnuts shielding works great!
I've done it to two guitars(so far), and the noise floor definately dropped.
BTW, I used the aluminum tape solution (about $7 a roll) w/thumbtacks at the junctions, and it made a marked improvement.:D

Oh, yeah....don't touch ungrounded equipment!!!