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I bought a GFS Gold Series active pickup earlier this summer for a project and when I wired it up last week it just didn't sound right. I was getting a lot of noise and the pickup sounded cold and lifeless. I have used their Red Series before and I have zero complaints about them. I removed it and replaced it with a no name Chinese active I received last week which sounds much better.
I went on the GuitarFetish website to look at their diagrams and the color sequence on the connector cable they supplied with the Gold Series is wrong. It should be white/black/red but it was black/white/red instead. This is more than likely why I was getting so much noise because the shielding was feeding RFI into the signal path instead of to ground. So, if you're using GFS actives look over the wiring harness first and if you end up getting a lot of noise swap the white/black wires to see if that resolves the issue.
I went on the GuitarFetish website to look at their diagrams and the color sequence on the connector cable they supplied with the Gold Series is wrong. It should be white/black/red but it was black/white/red instead. This is more than likely why I was getting so much noise because the shielding was feeding RFI into the signal path instead of to ground. So, if you're using GFS actives look over the wiring harness first and if you end up getting a lot of noise swap the white/black wires to see if that resolves the issue.