Fender Telebration noise!!

mmaatt25

Hi,

My Fender Telebration makes a noise that I can here through amps, but it seems only to be happen when the neck pickups is selected and in the middle position. You can here it when you strum harder.  It sounds like it's clipping , but I don't know if that even possible (for a pickup to have such high output that it clips).

Whats going on??

fatherjack

Have you tried swapping everything in your signal chain first?  Cable, amp, plug amp into a different socket (in a different room).

ICBM

The pickup itself can't be clipping. It's most likely that the level of bass frequencies is causing something else to clip.

Also possible there could be something loose in the wiring which is vibration-sensitive when you strum hard.

And check for microscopic 'whiskers' of metal (usually wire wool) stuck to the top of the pickup - if it contacts the string it will cause a crackle - this is more common on bridge pickups because the gap between the pickup and the string is smaller.

Chuffola

However, to check for microscopic things, you'll need a microscope...

:P

OilCityPickups

I use a hunk of Bluetack to clean up magnetic swarf from pickups in for repair ... works a treat

mmaatt25

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'm pretty sure I've tried it with every combination of leads & amps etc. I'll have to look at the guitar itself, I fixated on the neck pickup because that's the only thig that gives me that sound, but it could be the the switch, as well as your suggestions.

I like the guitar a lot and I quite like the pickups, so my heart sinks everytime I here it and you can only ignore that annoying sound so long

I tried to record it yesterday, but couldn't get it to make the noise. Now if that isn't quantum physics and Schrodinger's cat I what is    

mmaatt25

I opened the switch up and everything looks OK except in the photo you can see a black and a white wire which has some white heat shrink over it, the ends have been twist and soldered, but they are protuding the white heat shrink? They come from the humbucker. If they're suppsoed to insulated this could be a problem with them floating around and touching anything. Secondly on the back of the volume pot there is one solder pad with no wire attached, this seems odd as pots are not the easiest things to soldered and require a lot of heat. Have my two wires from my humbucker broken of this pot?

GuitarMonkey

Yes, the black and white joined wires should be insulated and no, they haven't come off the tone pot which should have one unused tag.

If the black/white join touches any earthed component (such as a pot back, your humbucker loses one coil and effectively becomes a single coil pickup. 

ICBM

Did you buy the guitar new? 

The unused spot of solder on the volume pot is odd. The soldering of the pickup wire onto the switch (top left in the pic) also looks non-factory - they're neater than that - so I would guess the pickup has been changed, and its ground connection used to be that spot of solder but is now somewhere else. If it's not soldered properly that could explain a loose connection.

mmaatt25

GuitarMonkey said:

Yes, the black and white joined wires should be insulated and no, they haven't come off the tone pot which should have one unused tag.

If the black/white join touches any earthed component (such as a pot back, your humbucker loses one coil and effectively becomes a single coil pickup. 

I've slid the heat shrink down so it cant short to anything.

ICBM said:

Did you buy the guitar new? 

The unused spot of solder on the volume pot is odd. The soldering of the pickup wire onto the switch (top left in the pic) also looks non-factory - they're neater than that - so I would guess the pickup has been changed, and its ground connection used to be that spot of solder but is now somewhere else. If it's not soldered properly that could explain a loose connection.

The pickups are stock, these were made in 2011. I traded the guitar with a chap who certainly hadn't had or done any work to it (I asked him), but I don't know if he was the original owner. The Humbucker wires are the thin wires which I would expect to see, but the single coil as you can see has far thicker like 22awg?? (you can see them in photo white to switch and green & black to back of volume pot).

I'll play it today to see if the exposed wire from the humbucker was the problem.

ICBM

I'm guessing either he wasn't the original owner, or that the guitar was tampered with before "sale" - ie probably sold, modded, de-modded, returned and then re-sold by the shop as new - this happens quite a lot…

Which is the black wire from the neck pickup? - the one that goes to the solder spot on the volume pot where the ground lead of the tone cap goes? That doesn't look quite stock.

If so that would explain the unused solder spot - someone has had the pickup out and connected it back differently. The soldering on the switch is definitely not factory either, it should look like the other terminals - neat and with the loose 'whiskers' folded round the terminal.

mmaatt25

ICBM said:

I'm guessing either he wasn't the original owner, or that the guitar was tampered with before "sale" - ie probably sold, modded, de-modded, returned and then re-sold by the shop as new - this happens quite a lot…

Yeah quite possible.

mmaatt25

The black and green wires that are twisted together and soldered to the volume, you can see the green wire in the photo.

ICBM said:

Which is the black wire from the neck pickup? - the one that goes to the solder spot on the volume pot where the ground lead of the tone cap goes? That doesn't look quite stock.

mmaatt25

I've reflowed all the solder joints and insulated the wires as already said.  I've played it this afternoon and can't get the sound that was irritating me.  So it's either cured or that cats back

ICBM

mmaatt25 said:

The black and green wire are twisted together and soldered to the volume, you can see the green wire in the photo.

Ah, got it. Which is the black wire that goes to the other side of the pot, over by the ground terminal? The soldering there doesn't quite look original either - Fender are extremely consistent the way they do it, once you've seen inside a few it's usually obvious when something has been tampered with. Something has definitely been soldered to that unused spot and then removed, anyway...

mmaatt25

ICBM said:

Ah, got it. Which is the black wire that goes to the other side of the pot, over by the ground terminal? The soldering there doesn't quite look original either - Fender are extremely consistent the way they do it, once you've seen inside a few it's usually obvious when something has been tampered with. Something has definitely been soldered to that unused spot and then removed, anyway...

That should let you how it's all wired.  Whats the point of the earth tag screwed into the body?? You can see the black wire going to earth bridge plate (bottome right wire). Earthing a wooden bodied guitar?

ICBM

It's to ground the shielding paint in the cavity.

I can't actually see anything wrong with the wiring there. The only thing I would change is to move the two black wires on the tone pot to the solder spot on the volume pot - Fender always ground the jack to the tone pot, which is bad practice since it can make a bad contact if the pots aren't really tight to the plate, and it can sometimes pick up more hum than connecting all the grounds to the same point, ie the back of the volume pot. (I would twist the black and white wires to the jack more tightly too, which tends to reduce hum.)

So if there is some sort of bad connection, it would have to be inside the neck pickup itself to affect just that. Which is not impossible, modern Fender pickups seem to be quite notorious for it. Or it could be the switch...

mmaatt25

I followed your advice and soldered the two black wires on the tone pot to the solder spot on the volume pot.

I managed to capture the noise, you can here it like a clicking (it is coming through the amp), but only when I tap the bottom height adjustment screw?? You can see when I tap the bottom of the pickup theres no noise??

 http://s1319.photobucket.com/user/mmaatt25/media/Telebration_zpsb476a792.mp4.html