shielding a tele

axisus

My self made Tele buzzes too much with a hint of gain. I realise that I can't completely get rid of it but I'm sure I can improve things.

It has no scratchplate, front pickup is mounted onto the body. It has a Bigsby B5. I ran an earth wire to underneath the Bigsby when I made it. Sometimes when I touch the B5 arm it buzzes a bit more, touch it again it buzzes a bit less. If the very soft skin under my forearm touches the strings I get an unpleasant electrical tingling. I just checked and I didn't do anything shielding-wise with the controls cavity.

So .... best plan of action?

ICBM

Use shielded cable for the neck pickup and the jack - these are the two big ones. If the bridge pickup is a standard Tele one with a baseplate it’s generally not too noisy, but shielding the pickup cavity and the control cavity will fix almost all the rest anyway.

You also have a bad ground contact to the Bigsby if touching it doesn’t always mute the noise.

axisus

ICBM said:

Use shielded cable for the neck pickup and the jack - these are the two big ones. If the bridge pickup is a standard Tele one with a baseplate it’s generally not too noisy, but shielding the pickup cavity and the control cavity will fix almost all the rest anyway.

You also have a bad ground contact to the Bigsby if touching it doesn’t always mute the noise.

Ta! Day off so I'll be taking a look now ...

Funkfingers

Even twisting the conventional conductor wire pairs together would help.

I just transferred an (almost) entire Fender pickups and controls assembly into a mid-price Stratocaster, leaving the cables and soldering in factory condition. Come testing time, the whole thing hums and buzzes because Fender cannot be arsed to twist the conductors together. The runs between pickups and controls are not long enough to correct this.

ICBM

Funkfingers said:

Even twisting the conventional conductor wire pairs together would help.

I just transferred an (almost) entire Fender pickups and controls assembly into a mid-price Stratocaster, leaving the cables and soldering in factory condition. Come testing time, the whole thing hums and buzzes because Fender cannot be arsed to twist the conductors together. The runs between pickups and controls are not long enough to correct this.

This is very true - although won't solve the whole problem.

But just turning this



into this



cut the noise by about half.