New Blacktop Tele, buzzes when not touching pickups or controls plate

KevinP

KevinP

Inspired
So I swapped out one of my other guitars for an HH tele, plays well but it buzzes like hell when I'm not touching the pickups or control plate. I checked and don't see a ground wire heading to the bridge, although there is one that is attached the body and then soldered onto the back of the tone pot. I don't even see a hole for one to go to the bridge. So if I'm playing it buzzes like hell, any ideas on how to fix this?
 
KevinP said:
So I swapped out one of my other guitars for an HH tele, plays well but it buzzes like hell when I'm not touching the pickups or control plate. I checked and don't see a ground wire heading to the bridge, although there is one that is attached the body and then soldered onto the back of the tone pot. I don't even see a hole for one to go to the bridge. So if I'm playing it buzzes like hell, any ideas on how to fix this?
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Confusing..hums when touching the metallic or not??
Some guitars just have a "tinned" wire laying under the bridge that makes contact. This wire travels through a small hole in the body back to the main cavity.
Verify with an ohmmeter, should be almost "0" ohms between the shield of the guitar input cable and the guitars ground plane.
If that is good, look for a polarity reversal on one or both of the pickups. White is HOT, BLACK is ground on SC stock pickups.
Try another input cable 1st. A bad shield will cause this too.
You body is an antenna for induced AC noise. SO when you touch the pickup pole pieces, hum is induced. SC pickups are notorious for this.
Good luck with it!
 
Thanks for the reply, it's actually humbuckers, and appears to be a ground problem. There is no wire for ground going to the bridge, only one going to the body itself, I've read Fender used paints that will conduct in the cavity so there wasn't a need to ground to the bridge (at least on newer HH models). Cable is fine on all other guitars, just this one is the issue and the problem goes away immediately when I touch the pickups or the control plate, just not when I touch the strings (which is normally how I expect it to work). Have a message in to my normal tech as well just in case he has time to fix.
 
KevinP said:
So if I'm playing it buzzes like hell, any ideas on how to fix this?
Click to expand...

I have a buddy who is in the same boat regardless of what he plugs into. He has an HH Tele as well and it's the noisiest guitar I've ever played. [don't take this too critically] I understand that it's a cool trend, but one mis-wiring or missed ground makes for a noisy and intolerable guitar IME. I would recommend bringing it into a guitar shop for them to trace where the noise could be coming from and to verify it's properly grounded. In your scenario, sounds like your body is grounded diverting the noise when touching the pickups. Just a thought to have a pro set it up, it'd probably get you to where you want to be a bit quicker.
 
Bring it and your receipt to an authorized Fender service center to get them to fix it for free.
 
Just traded for it yesterday, not the original owner and no receipt or even idea of year made. I was hoping for a quick "check this solder joint" or is this wire missing? type of statement, I'll take it in to get worked on though. Thanks for the suggestion.
 
Here's something that gave me fits once many moons ago....make sure there's not conductive paint used to line the inside of the control cavities...that stuff is neat, but if you don't know about, can make it seem like the laws of the universe are somehow being bent.
 
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