Excessive noise with humbucker

[DavidLay]

Re: Excessive noise with humbucker

Thanks for the tips, Jocelyn. I haven't thought of those before. I tried several different cables but still had the same hum. I actually want to install a 5 way switch in this guitar in order to do coil splitting so that may be next on the list of things to be replaced. Also, is it at all possible that I overheated something in the volume pot when heating the solder on it to reground everything that was grounded to it or do those stand up to heat fairly well. I'm trying to decide whether or not I should have a go at replacing that as well.

[Jocelyn]

Re: Excessive noise with humbucker

Cool let us know how it goes. Rest assured again there is no way the Alnico magnets are causing the hum. I have a strong feeling it is the switch gone bad.

[DavidLay]

Re: Excessive noise with humbucker

My 5 way switch came today and I just finished soldering it in, following the SD diagram to have it Seymourized. Not wanting to take any chances, I went with a US made Fender switch to replace the generic Cor Tek 3 way it came with. All the positions work exactly as they are indicated to, but the hum is still the same. I wanted to do this anyway though so I don't consider it too much of a loss. Since one of the positions also puts the bridge pickup in single coil mode, I could comare it with humbucking mode. It's a little worse in single coil mode but not by much. Two other possibilities are that something in the low end Cor Tek volume pot got overheated from resoldering all the grounding wires on it a few times (once after refinishing the guitar, once again after changing out the pickups and a third time after putting in the new switch) or it could also be the shiny foil (holographic vinyl) used for my custom finish might also be it. The original pickup cavities were unshielded too but I added some aluminum foil to fix that. Maybe I could also add a grounding wire to connect them and to connect them to the ground inside the guitar, or maybe that's not needed. I saw a video of someone elses full shred that they added a ceramic magnet to but it also has the hum so it might not be the magnets. Still, that doesn't make sense though given how my Invaders are REALLY quiet when I'm not playing any notes. The official Seymour Duncan youtube channel administrator even offered to debug my hum situation and gave me a number. I just might give them a call and if we still can't figure it out, maybe I'll grab a noise gate pedal.

EDIT: I just tried riffing around on the guitar and noticed that while the hum wasn't gone, the new switch boosted the output a little bit and there was also a small amount of extra high end clarity that wasn't there with the previous switch, so odds are that the previous switch had something else a little off about it since adding the new one did something.