Rewired Jagmaster humming/clicking

[porkbrains]

Hello everybody, I just got this guitar I scored for about $20 revamped with new electronics and caps. I have a kill switch for each pickup and a toggle for each to switch between split and humbucker mode. It sounds amazing and I love it.

Here's the problem.

Problem is worse on hi-gain, but is present at any volume.

I checked cables, tried different amps, etc. I'm certain the issue is internal. What do I do? I have plenty of electronics experience (modding keyboards, not guitars), but I brought this to a guy who had fancy caps and trusted he could do the work, since he'd done similar complicated setups in the past. He proceeded to install the splits without a way to select between pickups (Both were always on). That made me lose a little faith in the dude. After getting it back with this obvious issue, I'd rather fix it myself at this point.

Could someone throw out some ideas for troubleshooting? I'm really just looking for encouragement to take the guitar apart...

If y'all think I need a tech, I'll take it in, but I'd rather not have to spend more money.

By the way, I have all the necessary equipment (soldering iron, wiring, etc.).

[porkbrains]

Would shielding or star grounding ala guitarnuts.com be helpful for this, or is it just a bad solder? Anyone ever heard something like this?

[Sweetfinger]

the hum when you lift your hand away from any grounded metal part of the guitar is normal. sorry.
The other clicking noise sounds like external interference from a cell phone. If the noise goes away or changes as you move, the source is external. Did you take the guitar to someone else's house or a store and try it there?

[porkbrains]

Is the sharp white noise that accompanies my hand touching the metal normal? It's loud and very noticeable at high volumes. I don't know much about pickups, but I've never played a guitar that amplified my picking this much. It's like I turned on a white noise percussive attack on an organ...

[David Schwab]

I haven't listened to the sound clip yet, but this sounds like there are shields not grounded, or bad grounds in general.

People were having similar issue with the Jaguar basses, and the fix is always soldering wires to all the foil shields to connect them together, and then to ground.

Don't be afraid of redundant ground wires. You cannot have a ground loop in a guitar. That star grounding stuff is nonsense. "Fancy caps" are nonsense as well.

I have fixed noise problems like this by running an additional ground wire from the pots to the jack a few times.

So I would start by checking that all the metal parts (switches, pots, foil shields if it has them) are grounded. Make sure there are ground wires run from the back of each pot to the next one, and then to ground.

Just follow standard guitar wiring and see what you get.

[axpro]

ground ground ground.

GROUND!


Sounds like the pickups are running in SC mode??? you are picking up a lot of interference, either from the guitar or the amp. did you wire the pickups in SC mode? what pickups?

Guitarnuts article on "quieting the beast" will certainly help. I tend to do it when customers have ground issues, but 9 times out of 10 with problems like this, there is an inconsistent grounding issue.

[porkbrains]

Yes, they're in SC mode. They are Duncan Designed humbuckers... HB-103s. Brings up another issue: the guy who wired this told me that the center position of the three way switch is humbucker mode and that the forward and back positions are each of the respective single coils. The strange thing is that the center position is half as loud as the F and B positions... Which indcates the SC from what I've gathered on this foum. Any ideas?

Should I even bring this back to him for fixing the grounding, or should I just cut my losses and move on to a new tech?

[David Schwab]

Yes, they're in SC mode. They are Duncan Designed humbuckers... HB-103s. Brings up another issue: the guy who wired this told me that the center position of the three way switch is humbucker mode and that the forward and back positions are each of the respective single coils. The strange thing is that the center position is half as loud as the F and B positions... Which indcates the SC from what I've gathered on this foum. Any ideas?

Should I even bring this back to him for fixing the grounding, or should I just cut my losses and move on to a new tech?

The center position is probably out of phase. He's probably using one coil from each humbucker, but he's using the wrong coil on one of them.

Why would you want to run the humbucker in single coil anyway? They don't sound good as single coils, and they are noisy.

Also, keep in mind that shielding will not get rid of single coil noise. It only gets rid of electrical field noise. That 60Hz hum from single coils is magnetic field noise.

Sounds like this guy didn't know how to wire up a guitar.

[axpro]

+1

If the middle poisition is quiet, then he has combined coils that are out of phase with each other.

I also agree with David in that HB103's aren't going to sound that great in single coil mode. no humbucker (except maybe the P-rails...they're pretty awesome) will sound like a true SC. If you are going for a SC "flavour" i tend to use parallel wiring. cuts noise and has a nice clean sound.

Proper shielding will help A LITTLE with the noise you are experienceing, but Single coil noise is single coil noise.

My call would be to use a "super switch" and wire it with some parallel options for your single coil type sounds, but if your tech gave you back your guitar with out of phase pickups without telling you, maybe that would be above his/her skills at the moment.

[axpro]

Should I even bring this back to him for fixing the grounding, or should I just cut my losses and move on to a new tech?

As a tech who does a lot of electronic mods, and have a few tech friends who hate them, this is a touchy subject. Personally, i would RUN FAR FAR AWAY from this tech. it's obvious he doesn't know all he should yet. but on the flipside, i have tech friends who hate doing electrical work and call me for help fairly often, but are awesome at setups/refretting/finish repair (I suck at finish repair) so keep in mind that most techs have strong and weak skills.

That all being said. you are looking for electronics mods. if you aren't going to do it yourself, find a tech who does a lot of them and visit him or her and ask about ideas. I like talking shop with customers now and then, as long as i don't have a refret or 3 waiting. and most techs will have experience and other ideas that you might not have thought of.

[porkbrains]

Thanks again for all the help guys. i didn't mind the weird wiring, your idea of what sounds "good" is far from mine I'm sure. I actually like the thin, nasal out-of-phase sound... when that's what I expect. I wanted these coils split up in different configs because I use my guitar with a lot of effects, and often I appreciate (or find useful) what others would consider total crap. Certain digital effects sound incredible when pushed very lightly, but sound really standard in humbucking mode. I'm really happy with my new caps and tonal options. I'm just not happy with the popping when i touch metal, or with the strange rhythmic hum loop (again, I could find that awful sound very useful if I could turn it on and off.)

Regardless, i was trying to ascertain whether or not the tech i was using knew what he was talking about. I think we have our answer. I will chalk this up as a very useful learning experience.

[axpro]

That noisy rhythmic popping sounds like interference froms omewhere else. hard to pin down... single coils are NOISE MAGNETS!!!! so a crt computer monitor or a TV, or even a poorly wired house/workshop can add more noise to the mix (flourescent lights included)

The out of phase thing isn't "bad" but i'll say that the majority of guys i do mods for, who deliberately ask for out of phase (on purpose) usually come back and ask me to change it. as for the Humbuckers being to loud when driving effects and stuff, thats why i mentined wiring them parallel. MUCH less output, cleaner jangly tone. Try out a gretsch duo jet and a les paul (not the korean dual jet, one of the japanese or older american ones) they used underwound pickups wired parallel for the most part. that gave them the jangle clean sounds, without the noise. The pickups you used are import clones of duncan distortions... not really a good choice for cleans. If cleaner, low output pickups were your goal, hb101's or FG101's would be a better choice (sticking with duncan designed)

[porkbrains]

No, I don't mind the high output, and I rarely use a true clean sound. The other issue is that I get this sound on all pickup settings, humbucker included (Even when they're all off). I guess if you're saying that the SC wiring causes this interference even when not engaged, that makes sense...

Maybe another switch to select between phase/oop.. Can't have too many switches. ; )

[axpro]

well, again, besides the SC issues, there could very well be bad ground issues or poor (or comlete lack of) shielding. The only way to be 100% sure is to open it up and make sure the grounds are connected properly. Having someone else idea of custom wiring makes this much more difficult. unfortunately the noises are not 100% definable... it doesn't sound like a specific problem, but could be a combination of them. as i stated first off, GROUND!!!! the noise changes you get based on direction you are facing is comletely normal though. the lovely world of single coils.

[David Schwab]

I also agree with David in that HB103's aren't going to sound that great in single coil mode. no humbucker (except maybe the P-rails...they're pretty awesome) will sound like a true SC. If you are going for a SC "flavour" i tend to use parallel wiring. cuts noise and has a nice clean sound.

P-Rails aren't really humbuckers, they are two single coil pickups stuck together. My limited experience with installing them on someone's guitar was that the two coils sound too much alike, and with the two in series they were very muddy. In parallel it wasn't too exciting either. It's a good concept, but it needs tweaking.

I fixed the issue of the different settings sounding too similar by tuning the coils with caps. Then it really sounded like a Strat or P-90.

Now if they tapped the coils so in humbucker mode they used half the windings on each coil, that would sound better.