Strat noise

Pickups, wiring schemes, switch techniques and onboard active electronics for guitars and basses
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DaveKerr
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Post by DaveKerr »

phatt wrote: So think very carefully before those mods.
C'mon Phil - what kind of namby-pamby attitude is that to take? Swap out the pots, play around with different tone caps, treble bleed caps on the vol pot, etc - all this stuff is worth playing around with and is reversible to boot. :lol:
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Post by JiM »

caspercody wrote:Anyways, I see I have 500K pots with the .033 cap. But a lot of the wiring diagrams I see online use 250K pots with a .022 cap. Is there much difference in sound with these two different types? Ir does this not matter much?
Traditionally, 500k is used for humbuckers and 250k for single coils. This has an impact on treble, higher resistance has more treble when full on. Most people think that 500k is too shrill on single coils, and that 250k is too dull on humbuckers. But you may disagree, it's a matter of taste.

For a quick try, you can clip a 470k resistor across the volume pot (pin 1 and 3). The taper will be weired, but you'll see how a 250k pot affects the sound. For the tone pot, just turn it down a bit (if log taper) or half-way (if linear) for an easy simulation.

The aformentionned Tele has a 250k volume pot, and a 500k tone pot with a tweed-like wiring (like that but with different values).
I only give negative feedback.

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caspercody
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Post by caspercody »

Got the copper tape, and taped the cavity and underside of pick guard. This to me did not make any change in hum.

The shielding the pickup wires, jack wire, and wire from vol pot to switch made the only change in decreasing the hum noise. It did not get rid of all of it, but helped.

Another question. Is the middle pickup reversed wired? Reason I ask is I tried a configuration change, moving the bridge and middle pick up wire on the switch around. But when toggling through the switch, I got a lot of hum when the switch was in the position for dual pick ups.

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Post by telecaster »

If you're getting more hum on the between settings on the switch, the middle pickup is probably not reverse wound. I have two strats, one reverse wound and one not. The reverse wound is dead quiet on the between settings.The other strat has some hum depending on what lights are on and where I'm standing in the room. I don't think you'll eliminate the hum entirely with single coils, but you can control it, it's just the way it is.
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mojah63
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Post by mojah63 »

The first post says no hum in the notch positions

If you really want no as in zero hum all the time ditch the single coils. Your wasting money that could be spent on new pickups. Dimarzio Duncan bill Lawrence Wilde fender ect all make noiseless pu lace are actually well shielded single coil the rest are small humbuckers. Yeah they don't sound exactly the same but they all have usable tones.

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Post by DrNomis »

My Fender Mexican Standard Stratocaster tends to suffer from hum in the neck,middle,and bridge pickup positions, this is something that's a given with guitars that have single-coil pickups installed, the main reason why they hum is because the single-coil construction does not "buck" or cancel-out the mains hum frequency like a Humbucking pickup does, also a single-coil is very good at picking up or sensing the magnetic field generated by the mains power,but, the coil has a pickup characteristic similar to a microphone with a figure-8 sensitivity characteristic, have you noticed that the hum loudness changes when you change your position relative to nearby mains powered equipment?.... :thumbsup
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Post by caspercody »

@DrNomis, yes. The noise is less in certain locations.

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