Les Paul buzzes until I touch the strings or pickup

GordonBennett

I've got a 96 Gibson Les Paul and when plugged in it buzzes lightly until I touch the strings, pickups or output jack. Is this some kind of grounding issue? Any ideas on how to fix it? Thanks a bunch.

YourArsenal87

My PRS 594 did the same thing, which was a conscious decision by Paul as far as I remember. Something to do with the wiring or pickups not being potted I think?

TheBigDipper

An expert will be along later, but I believe that's normal. Humbuckers don't stop all noise. RF signals in the air are passing through your unearthed body. When you earth yourself by touching those parts, it no longer goes through you because the guitar is grounded and then so are you. 

Experts...  right? Or total garbage? 

John_A

Missing ground/earth, If you have a multimeter check for continuity between a)strings and back of pots and b) back of pots output jack, if its a) then most likely connection to tailpiece, if b) most likely one of the wires connecting all the backs of the pots

ICBM

It's not a missing ground connection - it's normal, and caused by poor shielding. The ground connection to the bridge/tailpiece is present if touching the strings stops it, and both sets of controls are properly grounded if one pickup doesn't buzz when you touch the cover. (It wouldn't work properly anyway without being.)

To fix the problem fully you will need to line the control and switch cavities with copper foil tape. But on modern Gibsons, there's one single place the noise gets in more than anywhere else, which is the unshielded cores of the cable that runs into the control cavity from the switch. These are left far too long, and shortening them all - especially the one that goes to the jack cable terminal - will noticeably improve things.

PRS seems to have made a deliberate decision to do stupid things like this too, yes - my Hollowbody had eight inches of totally unshielded wire between the switch and the volume control, so of course it buzzed. I replaced it with proper shielded cable and the problem stopped...

GordonBennett

Thank you for this. Having never dabbled with changing anything but strings I've taken an old beat up, fucked strat copy out of the loft and I'm going to replace all the hardware, tuners and pickups. It wasn't working at all and I've managed to fix that as well as adjusting the vintage truss rod to cure some buzzing. Once I've become well acquainted with a soldering iron ill have a go at the Les Paul. 

TTony

GordonBennett said:

Once I've become well acquainted with a soldering iron

One end gets hotter than the other.