Please be kind if i just bummped a hundred threads at once.

As most of you know i was havimg some issues with one of my strats. I got a huge amount of buzz with it through my amp. Which i thought may have been an amp or a tube issue, but the horrible hum seems to follow the guitar. When i was testing this thing out we were having thunderstorms. So when playing the guitar barefoot on ceramic tile. And simply sitting down and lifting my feet up effected the hum. So Im chaulking that up to mothr nature as i was reading that electrical interference including electricity in he air can be picked up by single coil strat guitars. So even after reading a few web sites on the subject. I have two questions.
1. How thick does the copper foil need to be? Hobby lobby sells sheets at 40 gauge and 36 gauge.
2. Some tech go so far as to wrap the cables with copper tape. Is this nessary? If he entire cavity is sheilded arnt the wires inside the cavity now considered shielded?

Thanks

The 36 should be fine. The 40 might be a bit harder to manipulate. Getting the folds right so you don't have big bunches causing fitment issues when everything goes back into the route.

While the shielding will help, it sounds to me like you might have a cold solder joint on one of the grounds. I would re-flow all of the solder as well while you are at it. Might even want to grab yourself a high silver content solder while you are at it. RadioShack

My American Deluxe Telecaster was acting like this. Mine was a lot easier though. Once I pulled the pickgaurd one of the leads came off the neck pickup. Re-soldered and all is well now.

The problem with doing shielding yourself is that if the job is not 100% complete you can actually make the problem worse rather than better. The partial shielding can act as an amplifier making noise louder. I would not recommend wrapping foil around individual wires. There is potential there for some serious noise issues if something goes wrong.

You may want to take a look at this as well. Unfortunatley the decvice will affect the quack in positions 2 and 4 because you can't run your middle pup with opposite polarity. Nevertheless, it does seem to work. I have not tried it myself but others claim it is a true miracle worker.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

Does the humming stop when you touch the strings??

You might wanna check the ground connection to the trem as well.
If it's a hard tail, you need to connect the bridge, if it's a trem equipped guitar, connect ground to the spring claw in the back.

Recheck all ground solder points or better resolder them as advised above.

Really sounds like a grounding problem, not a shielding problem. If it was a shielding problem, then lifting your feet off the ground wouldn't affect it, since lifting doesn't change the amount of interference picked up by the pickups.

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Kindest regards from Germany, Dee
My recordings --> http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_mu ... dID=564337
STRATS ROCK!!! but Teles and Firebirds, too!

True about the feet thing, though i have a true humbucker guitar and i get absolutly no hum, the hum actually gets worse when i touch ground, like the strings or the chassis of the amp, very anoying other strat style guitars have this hum just not as bad. If i plug this guitar to the input 2 jack it gets bearable. Oh and of course a noise gate helps with the hum when the guitar is not in use but even while playijg i can hear the hum under the playing. I havent tested the guitar in another though i guess i should. Maybe i should hit all tue solder joints as mentioned above and replace the capacitors if it has any. By the way there is little resistance when i test with a multimeter against the strings and the cord tip.

Ok, that beats me, I#m pretty limited as far as electronics go.
I would certainly recommend to check the humming guitar with a different amp (maybe at a store).
You need to confirm, whether the problem is guitar or amp related. I assume it's the guitar.

_________________
Kindest regards from Germany, Dee
My recordings --> http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_mu ... dID=564337
STRATS ROCK!!! but Teles and Firebirds, too!

When I read that It look you could have a ground problem and you have to fix that before doing shielding.
I write "you could have". Not sure. you have to do more test like your hand on the string what happened.
I used shied copper an black conductive paint. IMO paint is easiest and do the job.

Barefoot with electrical tools/ appliances/ guitar is a very dangerous.

Booo Hisss.. It is my guitar! just tried it on another fender amp. Oh btw i just picked up a champ 25. just a few hours ago buts another thread.
same issue with different amp. Yes it does go away after i touch the strings or chasis ground. Guess i should start looking at the ground connections.

You CERTAINLY should. It's pretty clear now: grounding probs!

_________________
Kindest regards from Germany, Dee
My recordings --> http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_mu ... dID=564337
STRATS ROCK!!! but Teles and Firebirds, too!

Yes, ground is missing on your guitar. Do you have a meter ? Check ohms between metal part.
If you touch strings with hand and you have less hiss ; check ground wire under the bridge. This is the only metal piece between your strings and guitar ground.

You talk about chassis ??? what do you call a chassis on guitar ?

Sorry meant ground on the amp it was plugged into.
Wait! doesn't grounding the guitar complete an electrical circuit causing a potentially life threatening situation? Maybe I'm wrong. I'm sure I am since most people ground their guitars.

No, it is not.
The problem lies in the amp. If the amp is not grounded properly, then you got a problem.
If the high voltage finds its way through the amp input via the cable to the guitar, you're in trouble!
That's why amateurs shouldn't friggle around with the amps' electrics. It should be done by professionals.

All guitars are grounded and need to be.

_________________
Kindest regards from Germany, Dee
My recordings --> http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_mu ... dID=564337
STRATS ROCK!!! but Teles and Firebirds, too!

Gottcha there I always make sure I got the 3 prong plug on every appliance in the house! So Yeah i think Im going to redo the guitar once I get some copper tape. just want to do everything at once. Not to mention replace the pots. I admit the volume pot has a some scratch in it and has a huge dead spot. I wouldnt doubt if my issue lies partly on the pots as well. might as well get a better components, it is a Mexi-strat.

morbe,
Are your guitar are original ? No mods ? Sometimes a bad solder soud like a groud issue.
Scratch pot is usualy fix with a good contact cleaner. But if the pot are cheap, not sure it will work.

For shielding, copper is not easy to do a good job. Shielding ,like BMW-KTM write, if is not perfect done it won't work.

Better to use black conductive paint sold at Stewart Macdonald. The pickgard need to be shieded too.

So first things first. I took my strat apart, and all the connections look pretty solid. Every thing is connected. Im still getting the hum. Some thing i did notice were. If i turned down the corresponding tone knob to 0 the hum goes away. So if i have the selector set to the bridge and middle pick up and i turn the top tone pot to zero the buzz goes away. I am the second owner of the guitar but i suspect now that i had a chance to look at the guts i suspect it was modded since it had a orange restistor thingy connecting the bottom tone to ground i dontvthing this was standard on a mexistrat. Maybe i just see what high quality tone, volume and selector switch do.