Squire Tele Affinity 6,000,000 Cycle Hum

[RightD27]

Hello all. I hope that you are all well, safe from the heat, hurricanes, covid and humanity’s general stupidity. I think that the heat here in NY melted what little brain I have coupled with an infection in a tooth that needs a root canal because I’m drawing a total blank on a problem.

My son has a Fender Squire Affinity Tele. Even though he’s got a gorgeous Fender Jazzmaster and Danelectro Baritone among other nice guitars, he loves this guitar and it’s one his “go to” instruments. I do all of the work on his guitars and know this Tele inside and out. The other day he gave it to me to change the strings he and said that the pickups were super noisy. Initially I asked him if he was sure that it wasn’t just normal 60 cycle hum and he said that it wasn’t. I know that his amps are properly grounded (a Vox and a Fender Twin Reverb). I plugged it into my rig (2 Marshalls, 2 Peaveys, properly grounded) and HOLY SMOKES !! Horrible, unplayable noise. Even with a noise gate. I thought that it could be the 3-way switch but without any gain at all, no noise. Flipping through the 3 positions with a clean tone, no issues. Like I said earlier, I know this guitar. I mainly play metal and know that I’ve played this guitar in the past with very high gain in and it sounded awesome. I’m ruling out the switch and the pickups as the problem. Before opening up her electronics, I’d like to get a general idea of what’s going on. Could is be something as simple as a week soldering point somewhere ?

Thanks for any insight you can provide.

 

[PFDarkside]

Did you check the soldering on the Jack?

 

[beaubrummels]

Is it affected by whether you are touching the strings? If so, the ground from the bridge to the controls could have broken.

Turning the volume down doesn't rule out the switch.

I don't get how clean could have no issues but with gain it's unbearable. If there's unexpected noise interference, IME you'd hear it at every gain level.

 

[RightD27]

Thanks for the replies guys. Much appreciated.

Clean, no noise whatsoever. Not even 60 cycle hum. Kick on the drive channel on the amp. Much noise. Go through my compressor and processor but clean. No noise. Switch to a gain bank. Much noise.

With just bridge pup, noise. Switch to middle position for bridge and neck, noise but noticeably less noise. With just neck, much noise. Touching and not touch strings doesn’t change anything. The amount of noise doesn’t increase or decrease at all.

 

[beaubrummels]

It's not clear to me if the processor is always in line when this happens. If you plug the guitar straight into the amp with nothing else in the signal path, is it the same? Clean no noise, gain has noise?

 

[RightD27]

Sorry for the confusion. When I go direct to the amp, clean channel. Not a single db of noise. Kick on the gain channel and it’s horrific. Then when I go through my processor to the amp, same thing. Clean sounds gorgeous and full. I even put my compressor in front of the processor like I normally do and clean is flawless. Throw gain on and it’s brutal. I know it’s not the amp 100% because I repeated the process on 3 other amps. To be sure I wasn’t completely losing my mind, I ran 3-4 other guitars through the same setups. I confirmed with my son that this is definitely a new problem. I don’t get it. Yeah, gain can be problematic at times with lipstick and single coil pups. I know my Strat gives minimal noise and lightly putting a noise gate on solves that problem. I even split-coiled the bridge pup one of my Warlocks and there is no problems.

 

[RightD27]

I wish that touching and not touching the strings would change the signal so then I’d know for sure it’s a ground issue.

 

[Mincer]

Have you tried it into the gain channel of another amp?

 

[SweetClyde99]

Touching the stings is supposed to quiet things down, as thy grounds the EMI coming from your body, so the fact that it makes no difference make me think that there is a problem with the ground wire running to the bridge.

 

[RightD27]

@Mincer: Yup. Tried it through 3 different amps plus the initial one.

@ SweetClyde99: I opened her up last night to see if maybe there was a weak solder point somewhere. Everything was fine. Is is possible that somehow between the cavity and the bridge something happened to the ground wire ? Yes, but it’s doubtful. The only way I can see something happening to it is of the guitar was dropped which didn’t happen.

I did notice something though. Rolling back the tone pot and / or volume pot reduces the noise to just common 60 cycle hum. I know that I changed the volume pot on her back in February. I’ve never seen this before but could a bad cap or tone pot be causing the noise ? Out of all of the pots that I’ve ever changed over the years, there has never been a noise issue. The pot either worked or didn’t.