Getting hum, when I touch control plate, how to fix?

[FiendN]

Getting a moderate hum from all selector switch positions...

When I touch the control plate (its a tele) or touch a body cavity lug the hum totally goes away.

I have checked out my bridge ground, tried grounding the neck p'up cover but no luck. I have all grounds (including bridge ground) soldered together and run to body cavity lug. From there I run a wire to the output jack's ground pole.
This is how i have always done it and no problems until now. Can someone tell me If I've done anything fundamentally wrong?

My setup is as follows:

1991 U.S. Tele with Custom 5 bridge, Alnico Pro 2 neck
3 way switch for split - stud coil/ both/ adj coil
Push/ Pull for single soil phasing (in conjunction with bridge)

250k volume pot
500k tone pot

Thanks so muchj

[Metalman_666]

Re: Getting hum, when I touch control plate, how to fix?

Maybe the tele isnt that well shielded...

[FiendN]

Re: Getting hum, when I touch control plate, how to fix?

No John John

I have 1 single wire running from the back of the pot to my "star point". This effectively grounds everything ggrounded to the pot. This is the way Ive always done it with no problems. All components are grounded to the pot. So the problem lies elsewhere Im afraid.

And no Metal Man, poor sheilding would produce a hum no matter if you touched the control plate or not. Since touching the control plate and/ or the ground lug makes it go away, it is SURELY a grounding problem.

Thanks for the brainstormin, KEEP 'em COMIN

[Robert S.]

Re: Getting hum, when I touch control plate, how to fix?

Fiend, it could be a couple of things. First off I'd connect an ohm meter across the bridge and the output jack sleeve. Anything short of zero ohms and you have a bridge ground problem. With Teles the bridge ground is often no more than a wire poking up through the body and the connection is made with pressure when the bridge is screwed to the body. Sometimes that connection gets lost and moving the ground wire location under the bridge will cure that.

I thought I read somewhere in one of your other posts regarding this guitar that you have a phase switch on the neck single coil. This isn't a good idea from what I understand. The true singles often combine the coil finish wire with the chassis ground, and changing the phase will cause the chassis of the pickup to be hot and that causes alot of noise. This may not be your problem but it seems like this might cause issues for you. Put the phase on the bridge pickup instead as that has a seperate ground wire for the chassis. The sonic results will be the same, plus changing the phase of a split humbucker causes the adjacent coil to be hot so you'll be able to choose which coil on the bridge pickup you want to split to.

The third thing it might be is a noisy pot. Sometimes pots go bad and will cause the same ground/hum problem that you are having. I don't know how to test for pot hum but you can bypass the pots by connecting the bridge humbucker directly to the output jack (connect the bridge ground there as well) and if the problem goes away you likely have a bad pot. You can try to track it down by working the bridge humbuckers hot lead back through the circuit until you find where the hum starts to occur.

Good luck. Tracking down noise in a guitar, especially one with complicated switching can be a bear put you'll figure it out if you stay at it.