Tone Knobs - Whats the normal amount of buzz/hum

[thascalus]

My shielded Strat is complete and it has three knobs, four if you count the one holding the guitar! But seriously, after shielding should I still hear a buzz/hum from my amp? The buzz goes away when I turn my tone knobs all the way down, and its comparable to the amount of buzz I get from my friend's un-shielded Strat. Its like the shielding is making no difference.

(side note: the best friend's un-shielded Strat will not buzz if I turn the tone knobs down, just like mine)

[Yew]

I dont beleive it should, I reccomend waiting till one of the guys who has actually done the sheilding procedure to come among first though, as i dont have a clue about it

(also i need to get the broardbucker explained to me one day...

[ashcatlt]

The buzz likely isn't going away when you turn the tone knobs down, it's just that the higher harmonics of the noise signal are being shunted to ground along with the rest of the treble from your pickups and the lower harmonics are usually masked by your playing.

It should be noticeably quieter than it was, but testing it against some other guitar won't tell you much. Did you go through with a meter and check to see that all of your shielding is electrically continuous and that it all has a solid connection to the jack sleeve?

[ashcatlt]

yew - start a thread with your questions, or jump into this thread and we'll try to clear things up for you.

[thascalus]

I'm still learning all this stuff, so when I replaced my single ceramic capacitors with a pair of bumblebee type re-pro's (snagged from eBay for $12) did I put them in backwards? Will flipping them the other way round make a difference?

[ashcatlt]

There is no backwards on those caps, and they can come before or after the variable resistor without any difference. As long as the tone controls work the way you expect (lots less treble when turned down) you're fine there.

The noise problem probably comes from a discontinuity in the shieding. Got a meter?

[thascalus]

Yea. How am I going to find this discontinuity? One lead at the tremolo claw ground, the other... everywhere?

Update: I dont think I have a discontinuity in my Faraday cage. I did follow the steps at this link: and after I got past step 3.

Step 4: Unplug the other end of the cord from the amp (or the stomp box it is plugged into).
If the noise level dropped significantly the problem is the cord. Replace the cord.

This not only reduced the noise significantly, it reduced it completely. I guess I've answered the question in my original post, because I was using the same guitar cord for both guitars. I guess it's just a cheap piece of $#!@ cable. I can't believe theres not a thread for guitar cables on these forums. Obviously I want a combination of low-price and shielding without falling for the pitfalls of hype and myth listed here

[thetragichero]

i only buy guitar cables that were buried in the soviet tundra for at least a period of 50 years

[Yew]

Nov 4, 2010 11:09:05 GMT -5 ashcatlt said:

yew - start a thread with your questions, or jump into this thread and we'll try to clear things up for you.

Im sure ill get round to it one day.. Havent got any guitars to wire yet

[jcgss77]

Nov 9, 2010 10:18:50 GMT -5 thetragichero said:

i only buy guitar cables that were buried in the soviet tundra for at least a period of 50 years

Cryogenics technology?

[newey]

Cryogenics technology?

Makes 'em superconducting . . . ;D

[gumbo]

....but trying to read the User Manual in Russian is a real pain....

[cynical1]

Manuals are for amateurs. Real men just fire it up...and pick up the pieces before the wife gets home...

HTC1

[irwired]

I got the pickin up the pieces part

But oooooo that smell...........of burnt carpet..... thats the hard one


IMHO

Cheers
IRW

[Yew]

Irwired, i was hoping that your post would be about southern fried cuicken