Epiphone Less Paul Ground Buzz

[t1000]

Hi
I have tried eveything so hopefully after finding this site you can help me. Basically I brought 2 No Kent Armstrong humbucker sized p90. I rewired the guitar complete and renewed all the electrics. I made a bit of a balls up so in the end I passed it to a local guitar tech. He basically has rewired the guitar again but I am getting a humming noise which goes as soon as I touch a metal component. I have tested the ohm with a multimeter and everything apears to be grounded ok. The only other thing im thinking it could be is either faulty pickup or something to do with the shielding? Can anyone help.

Thanks

[RandomHero]

Ok, t1000, if the guitar tech rewired it for you, there -shouldn't- be anything wrong with it, but that doesn't mean there isn't.

What I'm understanding from your post is that since you got it back there's a buzzing, but it goes away when you touch the strings, right? This, to a degree, is natural; the strings (and thus you when you're touching them) serve to sheild the pickups from electromagnetic interference.

When you got these p90s, were you replacing actual humbuckers? If that's the case a degree of new hum should be expected, since p90s still only have one coil each and are thus not noise cancelling on their own. If this is the case, there are steps you can take, detailed on the original GuitarNuts site, to sheild the cavities of your guitar, or if you would rather a tech do it for you, you might point them to guitarnuts2.proboards.com/page/gn1-pages and look for the Quiet the Beast mod.

I'm highly doubting it's a faulty pickup, and if your instrument was stock beforehand, chances are it has no sheilding to speak of.

Let me know how it turns out!

[z00dles]

Well I have a recent Epiphone semi-hollow with the original HB's and I notice a hum like yours (which goes away if I touch strings or bridge etc.) except it's quite noticeable with my tube amp but much less so with the solid-state amp... Like you I did a mutimeter check shows all grounds connected (ohms-wise) but I'm thinking of doins a star-grounding mod like mentioned in guitarnuts.com - but it might just be something that I'll have to accept (sigh..)

[eljib]

That's going to be a pretty tough mod on a semi-hollow, I would think. I was going to see if I could put a varitone in my Oscar Schmidt OE-30 (ES-335/Casino copy) but there is just no way to get around in there. In the end, I chose just to love it for what it was, which imho is a pretty sweet guitar, especially since it only cost me $100 brand new on eBay.

Also, I think you're gonna get more hum from fact that nothing is sheilded, rather than the fact that you've got a ground loop. Star grounding is going to be hard as hell, and possibly expensive, and it may not do what you're hoping it will.