The stock passive MEC J pickups in my Corvette Standard fretless had the typical single coil noise issues. Standing at a certain angle would eliminate almost all the noise, the same way as my single coil Strats have always been.
I swapped a set of Dimarzio Model Js in the other day. Love how they sound, but I'm getting insane ground buzzing. The Model Js are four-wire, and I have the black & white soldered together and taped, green to ground, red to hot. All the four-wire guitar humbuckers I've used always have a bare wire that goes to ground, but I think that's for the pickup's metal base plate, which the Model J does not have (a bare or a metal base). I've dealt with noisy pickups plenty of times, but here's where it gets a little weird.
Sometimes, I can touch the strings, and the buzzing goes away. Touching the bridge doesn't affect it much. If I back off the master volume a little, grabbing the knob on the edges (and usually touching the grub screw) will make the buzzing go away, but a fingertip on top of the knob will not. Any sort of finger contact to the blend (middle knob) will kill the buzz. Touching the tone knob will not.
This was what happened with the controls in completely stock form. This is my first experience with a blend knob, so I removed it, and wired it for standard 2 volume jazz wiring. Same thing: touching the neck volume only kills buzz when it's backed off a little, and not completely reliably. Touching the bridge volume kills the buzz, and touching the tone knob has no affect.
I opened the cavity and found that touching the pot cases will eliminate buzz with either volume, but not as much as touching the middle pot's knob.
Warwick's ground wire from the bridge is a thin, solid bare wire that goes from the bridge, and is soldered to each pot case. On my guitars, I always ran one wire shielded stranded wire from the bridge (or trem claw) to the closest pot, then another from that pot to the next, and so on for each component. Grounding the pickups to different pots makes no difference.
I noticed when I touched the black and white soldered & taped wires, the buzzing increased. Since I'm not using any of the series/parallel or coil-splitting functions, on the neck pickup, I clipped the wires really close to the pickup's base, and re-soldered and taped them. No affect.
Sorry for the novel length post, but I'm running out of ideas.
Additionally, I plugged my PRS Custom 24 in with the same cable. When I activate the coil-tap, I got a little noise, but in humbucking mode, it's dead silent whether I'm touching the strings or not. We've only been in this house for about 6 months, and I recently swapped my music room with one of the kids' bedrooms, but with one guitar being silent and another noisy, I don't think the house's wiring is the issue.
No dimmer switches in the house or anything, either.
I swapped a set of Dimarzio Model Js in the other day. Love how they sound, but I'm getting insane ground buzzing. The Model Js are four-wire, and I have the black & white soldered together and taped, green to ground, red to hot. All the four-wire guitar humbuckers I've used always have a bare wire that goes to ground, but I think that's for the pickup's metal base plate, which the Model J does not have (a bare or a metal base). I've dealt with noisy pickups plenty of times, but here's where it gets a little weird.
Sometimes, I can touch the strings, and the buzzing goes away. Touching the bridge doesn't affect it much. If I back off the master volume a little, grabbing the knob on the edges (and usually touching the grub screw) will make the buzzing go away, but a fingertip on top of the knob will not. Any sort of finger contact to the blend (middle knob) will kill the buzz. Touching the tone knob will not.
This was what happened with the controls in completely stock form. This is my first experience with a blend knob, so I removed it, and wired it for standard 2 volume jazz wiring. Same thing: touching the neck volume only kills buzz when it's backed off a little, and not completely reliably. Touching the bridge volume kills the buzz, and touching the tone knob has no affect.
I opened the cavity and found that touching the pot cases will eliminate buzz with either volume, but not as much as touching the middle pot's knob.
Warwick's ground wire from the bridge is a thin, solid bare wire that goes from the bridge, and is soldered to each pot case. On my guitars, I always ran one wire shielded stranded wire from the bridge (or trem claw) to the closest pot, then another from that pot to the next, and so on for each component. Grounding the pickups to different pots makes no difference.
I noticed when I touched the black and white soldered & taped wires, the buzzing increased. Since I'm not using any of the series/parallel or coil-splitting functions, on the neck pickup, I clipped the wires really close to the pickup's base, and re-soldered and taped them. No affect.
Sorry for the novel length post, but I'm running out of ideas.
Additionally, I plugged my PRS Custom 24 in with the same cable. When I activate the coil-tap, I got a little noise, but in humbucking mode, it's dead silent whether I'm touching the strings or not. We've only been in this house for about 6 months, and I recently swapped my music room with one of the kids' bedrooms, but with one guitar being silent and another noisy, I don't think the house's wiring is the issue.
No dimmer switches in the house or anything, either.
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