Building a 6-string slider and I'm getting a really bad buzz. Checked and double-checked my connections from pickup to output jack and they're fine. When I touch the bridge or strings I get even more hum. No volume or tone pot - just straight wired into jack. To ground to the bridge am I grounding my pup to bridge or jack to bridge? And of course, when I touch the jack it's as quiet as a church mouse. One of these days I'm gonna figure this shiz out. Help!
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Sorry dude, you have wired the bridge/strings to the hot side of the circuit rather than to ground. When you have it right touching the strings will be the same as touching the jack is :)
I'm an idiot. Thanks for all the help guys. Y'know, I used to build computers as a hobby, then discovered cigar box guitars. As usual, it's operator error. I'll be sure and post pics after I do a little tweaking.
Have you taken the bridge off to make sure your ground is touching? The only other thing I can think of is try switching your hot and ground wires from your pickup.
Even a strat will buzz under full volume. sometimes turning down the vol. knob on a guitar will quiet the buzz...
Lots of things can introduce noise... long wire runs, etc. Try twisting all your lead wires with a ground wire... that might help a little...
Single coils will inherently produce some buzz/noise. If wiring direct to jack w/ pickup, that's a good thing. But you have to also add a connection to ground lug on your jack from the metal telecaster bridge, which will ground strings at the same time. If all your solder joints are solid, this should quiet things up. To take it a bit further, shielding with copper tape around your pickup cavity, and connecting that to ground too will finish the job.
Playing under or near florescent lights can make things noisy too.
Hope this helps, good luck.
Farmer Ted,
Yeah I know single coils are a little noisier. I did add a ground connection from the ground lug on the jack to the tele bridge but for some reason it made things worse. Anything metal on the guitar I touch just exacerbates the problem, be it the tuners, the strings, or the bridge itself. I'm stumped.
Could you post some pics of the circuit? Also, have you tried it on another amp? Are your wires correctly soldered at the jack?
Then a mystery, it is. In my experience, ground buzz troubles are always a physical thing (i.e. cold solder joints or bad contact). Tuners, strings, bridge are all one continuous flow of metal, so if good connections via solder joints, etc., then I am stumped too.