Buzz when touching polepieces

[daz]

I've noticed that recently i have been getting a buzz if i touch a polepiece on either of my strats like the kind of buss you get when touching the hot of a plug when it's plugged into the amp. Not sure what would have caused this, as nothing on the amp has been recently changed other than changes that i've done before. Could this be caused by a component not grounded well in the amp or what? I don't get it because the polepieces are electronically isolated for the circuit unless it's against the winding where some enamel came off. But it does this on any pole of any pickups in either strat. Any ideas? Oh, this is a self built cathode biased high gain EL34 build which has never been noisy at all and i never had this issue in the past with these guitars or this amp.

[Claus H]

The quick and simple solution reverse the ground and signal wires on your pickups, remember all of them!! it is becourse the start of the coil is, closes to the polepieces and this is where the signal wire is connected. And the hum you pickup get's coupled to the signal wire just like when you touch the end of the jack plug. If the hum, when you touch the polepiece is real bad you might have a "break" in the isolation of the wire, test it by mesureing the resistance from the polepice and the signal wire, it should be infinity! if not you might even have a small short in the coil! The polepieces have rubbed off the isolation of the wire!
If you reverse the wires so the start of the coil is ground the coupling from the polepieces will be to ground the hum will be gone, BUT the whole pickup migth hum more! becourse the signal wire is now more exposed to pickup, noise, but in a well shielded guitar the difference will be negliable.

Now some might say "now the pickup will be out of phase with the absolute phase of the instrument" and yes technical it is true that the instrument will play "out of phase" from what it did before, but as long as one guitar amp migth be in phase with what you feed the input, and another might be out of phase, I don't think it makes a diffrence Not to say that phase is not important! but in this case I think we are allright

[daz]

What i'm actually asking is what could have happened amp circuit wise, not with the strats. Because i've used these strats for years w/o this issue and it's unlikely all the pickups in 2 strats went bad at once. Anyways, i think i've narrowed it down to a issue with the house or the AC cords or something. I have to check all that, but i found it's doing it with any amp and guitar so something has changed in the house. I live in a house with other tenants in a connected but seperate studio, so i'm wondering if they started using something up there thats causing this because it never did it before.

[Claus H]

Can't see what could have happend to the amp that would give the polepieces more "sentivity" to hum if you touch them. Well not anything I know of at least well Happy humbusting

[Enzo]

Did the gound pin break off your power plug?

[daz]

No, in fact i tried it with a ground lifer too, but grouned AC plug or not it's doing this. And this is straight guitar>>>amp and nothing else. If i touch the strings and the polepiece at the same time it's almost zero....a little buzz, but probably 95% less. Now i understand it's typically normal that if you let go of the strings and are not touching anything grounded you get buzz. But this is different. In this case not touching the strings or touching them yields no difference in hum or buzz. Touching the strings while touching the pp as i said is 95% free from buzz. But touching only the pp yields a very loud buzz. So you're probably asking if it's possible i just happened to noticed this by accident and the reason i never did before is that since when you're playing your hands are always on the strings. But no, i know it didn't do this before because i noticed it happening as i was playing and a finger would brush the pp and i would hear what sounded like some sort of crackling sound. I couldn't figurre out what it was at first. But the thing is, while i said it goes away with hands on the strings, while playing there are moments where both hands leave the strings just enough that when the finger touches the pp it happens in that split second. also, just like the scenario where taking your hands off the strings yields buzz, the amount of pressure and amount of skin surface of the fingers on the string affects the degree of buzz.

anyways, i can't for the life of me understand why this would happen when the pp's are electronically isolated. Wierd. But it seems to happen a lot sometimes and is hardly noticable others. May have to do with how damp or dry my hands are at the time.

[eggle]

just a quick punt, but have you recently shielded your guitar bodies? or removed the pickguard and disturbed some shielding? just asking because if the pup screws were touching the shielding?
i have come across this when people give me there guitars and they did a crap job of sheilding and moving the selector switch to side to side will cause hum/crackiling and even short out....just a suggestion

[daz]

No, both strats haven't been changed or modded since this started. But even with any scenario as you described in place it still wouln't make sense to me because the polepieces are not in contact with anything other than the fiberboard of the sincle coil pickup body and the enamel of the magnet wire.