Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

[Gugnir]

Hi, i desperatley need help here... i just installed ("just" = 2 weeks ago) a set of LiveWire active humbuckers in my guitar. The LiveWire Metal (LW-HMET) in the bridge, and the LiveWire Classic (LW-CH1) in the neck.

But my problem is... the neck pickup (the classic) hums pretty loud when im not playing it... it picks up me playing perfectly, it give the full sound when i play... but when im not playing it hums.. and its annoying.

But thats only when im not touching metal on the guitar! If i touch the strings, the bridge, the output jack plate (or the jack itself) or if i even touch the switch (the metal part)........ the the humming gets ALOT quiter, to the point where its perfectly acceptable.. although it shouldnt be humming at all should it? either way when i touch metal... its fine... when im not touching anything it hums like crazy!

So i figure theres a bad ground somewhere, but i cant friggin find it, ive taken my guitar up to a local music store and had the guitar tech there look at it and he tried adding a few extra grounds here and there... after seeing that they did nothing... he didnt know what to do.

But now, heres the catch... my guitar only has 2 controls... 1 volume, 1 tone.
If you look at the official wiring schematic for the LiveWires located here:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/website/support/schematics/schematicsjpg/livewire_humbuckers.jpg

youll see thats for having 4 controls. But since i only have 2, i wired it like you would 2 passive pickups... although i installed the stereo jack and wired that like your supposed to with the actives.

I have drawn (spent 2 hours drawing this) a schematic of how i have the pickups wired. So PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!

Please take a look at it and tell me if you can figure out what is wrong? Maybe somethings bad? like the neck pickup? Because ONLY THE NECK PICKUP HUMS, The bridge works fine.

here is the schematic of how i connected them:

 

[Artie]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

The fact that touching metal causes the hum to diminish, means that the grounds are ok. The fact that the pickup works, means its wired ok. And your diagram looks great.

I'm not sure what to suggest, except that its possible that the pup is bad, but even then, I'm not sure how one could be "bad", and still work.

Hopefully someone else, or SD tech support will chime in.

Oh yeah . . . welcome to the forum.

 

[Gugnir]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

The fact that touching metal causes the hum to diminish, means that the grounds are ok.

thats supposed to be normal?? ive never noticed it on other pups... ive used EMG 81s before.. they never did it (well that was a bridge pickup.. and as with my lw metal bridge pup.. that one doesnt do it either)... and NO passive ive ever had has done that (ive had 3 different passive neck pups.. check my sig for info )

and haha thanks for the welcome..im a newbie to wiring guitars, im just learning.. tried learning from a friend but he wasnt a good explainer about anything so i just started reading webpages and looking at schematics.. figured out stuff for myself. I was wondering if maybe i burned out the pots or something from my inexperience but blah...

I emailed SD support a while ago and the guy said if the hum goes away when i touch metal then it is definitley a bad grounding (thats what he said)

i LOVE this lw classic pickup, best clean pickup ive ever heard so far .. hope i can get this sorted out ;S

 

[Artie]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

Grounding issues definitely entail some voodoo. I've been involved in electronics my whole life, and I still don't understand all aspects of it. Here's why I said what I did: Its hard for me to believe that you are grounding the guitar, unless you play barefoot on a metal floor. More than likely, your body is picking up stray RF and 60-cycle hum, (being mostly water.) You place the guitar next to your body and cause a coupling affect to the electronics. When you touch metal on the guitar, its the guitar thats grounding you . . . thus, the guitar is grounded.

But like I said, there's voodoo in them wires. I suppose you could take an ohmmeter and measure the resistance from the bridge pieces and the outside ring of the output jack.

Also, try playing in a different room, different amp, etc. See if any of those things affect it. These things can be elusive.

 

[Gugnir]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

yea ive tried moving around, it does it on alot of solid state amps, Crate half stacks... crate combos.. marshall solid state half stacks... marshal ss combos... standing up or sitting down... facing the amp and facing away...

but yet it doesnt seem to do it on any tube amps..... its pretty weird

and i use professional music instrument cables, gold connectors.. sheilded.. no noise from them

but nonetheless these are active pickups and i always read that active pickups were supposed to be less... noise succeptable ..than passives... yet ive never had passives do this

 

[Docrock]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

Dude, run a piece of wire from the back of your volume pot to the back of the tone pot....as I see it your missing a ground there. Some times we look too deep into it rather than seeing the obvious. Do that and Ill bet it stops.

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

Do you have the ground wire connected, meaning the one that goes to the bridge or trem-plate? I'm not sure with Duncan actives, but with EMG you do NOT connect that.

 

[Gugnir]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

Dude, run a piece of wire from the back of your volume pot to the back of the tone pot....as I see it your missing a ground there. Some times we look too deep into it rather than seeing the obvious. Do that and Ill bet it stops.

Ive done that, nothing happened, i aslo tried adding a ground from the switch ground to the back of the tone pot... that somehow disabled the tone... so i switched it to the volume pot... nothing happened then.. it still hummed.. so i took it off.

Do you have the ground wire connected, meaning the one that goes to the bridge or trem-plate? I'm not sure with Duncan actives, but with EMG you do NOT connect that.

yes it is touching the tune o matic bridge and then connected to the back of the volume pot.......... ill try taking it off and see if it does anything

however i cant do that untill saturday (i dont have a soldering kit, i use a friends ;/ )

 

[Gugnir]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

but having the central ground wire from the bridge touch the vol pot shouldnt make only the neck pickup hum should it?

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

but having the central ground wire from the bridge touch the vol pot shouldnt make only the neck pickup hum should it?

I don't know. My Strat has two passive pickups (Lace Sensors) and a Livewire Hot for Strat in the bridge, and the ground is connected. However, I'm using regular 250k pots, and there's a resistor between the Livewire and the switch, so maybe that makes it a totally different story

 

[Gugnir]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

do SD techs ever actually read these forums?

 

[Gugnir]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

*bump*

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

I'm scratching my head over this. I looked at your schematic... I doubt this is the problem, but I'm curious... why attach the bare pickup wires to the switch and not the back of the volume pot?

If this doesn't work, don't get pissed, but if it was me, I'd disconnect the "central" ground wire from the volume pot and see what happens. The ONLY thing I would be basing this upon is the fact that EMG schematics specify that you do NOT reconnect that ground.

 

[Gugnir]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

yea i just checked their schematics earlier today and saw that its a shock hazard to do that because active pickups are grounded internally.........

so i check my duncan schematic (the paper that came with the pickups) and it doesnt say anything about that HOWEVER, it says to connect a wire FROM the back of ALL potentiometers TO the ground lug of the jack...... but if both pots are grounded ( left lug to back of pot ) why do i need to do this? ima try it anyways

so saturday what ima do is, take off the bridge central ground... then im gonna connect 2 wires to the ground lug of the jack, one connecting to the back of the volume pot the other to the back of the tone pot.

but about the bare wires grounded to the switch.. well the switch is closer, so i figured id do that so there was more room (just a little) for the batteries. Because if i was to connect em to the back of the pot, id need to get a longer bare wire to solder to the pickup bares, then the other side to the volume pot.. it would only take up a tiny bit more room but i have to stuff the 2 9 volts in there, and theyre surrounded by foam so they dont touch anything and short out anything.... i need all the room i can get. Plus I read that you can do that so why not....

i guess ill try grounding them to the back of the vol pot incase the switch isnt grounding them right or something .. never know

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

yea i just checked their schematics earlier today and saw that its a shock hazard to do that because active pickups are grounded internally.........

so i check my duncan schematic (the paper that came with the pickups) and it doesnt say anything about that HOWEVER, it says to connect a wire FROM the back of ALL potentiometers TO the ground lug of the jack...... but if both pots are grounded ( left lug to back of pot ) why do i need to do this? ima try it anyways

so saturday what ima do is, take off the bridge central ground... then im gonna connect 2 wires to the ground lug of the jack, one connecting to the back of the volume pot the other to the back of the tone pot.

but about the bare wires grounded to the switch.. well the switch is closer, so i figured id do that so there was more room (just a little) for the batteries. Because if i was to connect em to the back of the pot, id need to get a longer bare wire to solder to the pickup bares, then the other side to the volume pot.. it would only take up a tiny bit more room but i have to stuff the 2 9 volts in there, and theyre surrounded by foam so they dont touch anything and short out anything.... i need all the room i can get. Plus I read that you can do that so why not....

i guess ill try grounding them to the back of the vol pot incase the switch isnt grounding them right or something .. never know

Be sure to let us know what happens... I'm very anxious

 

[Gugnir]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

well ok i tried putting a ground wire from both bots to the ground lug of the jack first.... nothing changed...... i took off the central bridge ground... and then the hum got 3 times louder... so i put that back on.....

this is messed up im just gonna try buying a new neck pickup (the same one tho)

the thing is with this one.. i bought it off ebay used for 20 bucks.. maybe thats the problem but its so hard to find the seymour duncan livewire classic ( ch1b ) anywhere else

 

[Gugnir]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

if the pickups bare wires were not connected to the ground would they still work but cause hum like mine are doing?

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

if the pickups bare wires were not connected to the ground would they still work but cause hum like mine are doing?

I don't know... based on what you said about the central ground, Livewires work NOTHING like EMGs. Good luck, bro

 

[Gugnir]

Re: Bad grounding problem LIVEWIRES, HELP!!

hmmm i just discovered something... the wiring is perfect... it turns out that hum is coming from my body. It stops when i touch metal on the guitar because the guitar is groundin ME.

i found this out by: when i move the guitar farther away from my body without touching any metal on it... the hum goes quiter the farther it gets. BUT what made me realize this is the fact that when im letting the guitar hang from the strap... without any part of my body touching any metal on the guitar... the guitar (neck pickup only) hums like crazy... but if one of my hands touches metal on ANOTHER OBJECT IN THE ROOM, then the hum silences. Now im talking about another object that is not connect to the guitar, completley seperate.

I had my guitar on the strap hanging from my neck, 1 hand touching the back of my computer (grounded metal) and the other hand just up in the air... so nothing was touching metal on the guitar... and the hum was silent.

so now ive come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with this pickup. Arent livewires supposed to be wax potted or whatever so that they dont pickup outside interference? my bridge livewire doesnt pick this hum up, and neither has any passive humbucker that ive had.

So maybe i need a new livewire classic pickup ;p