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Permalink Reply by Scott aka Farmer Ted on April 14, 2014 at 8:58am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Vick Griffin on April 14, 2014 at 9:07am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Scott aka Farmer Ted on April 14, 2014 at 10:14am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Richey Kay on April 14, 2014 at 5:34pm

Could you post some pics of the circuit? Also, have you tried it on another amp? Are your wires correctly soldered at the jack?

Obviously you can ignore the volume and tone control, but check that the hot and ground wires go to the right place. I play single coils all the time, with no shielding and every time I've had problems with buzzing, it's been a wiring mistake. :)

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Permalink Reply by John Sawyer on April 14, 2014 at 11:57am

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...

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on April 14, 2014 at 12:09pm

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.

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Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on April 14, 2014 at 7:13pm

'When I touch the jack it's as quiet as a church mouse'........

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 :)

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Permalink Reply by Vick Griffin on April 14, 2014 at 11:47pm

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.

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