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Post subject: Help with information about a Noisy Pickup
Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 2:01 pm
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I have a horribly noisy PBass pickup. The pots, pickups, jack and wiring are original and factory soldered. I am pretty sure they are from 1983. Are pickups from that year or in the early '80's known for being overly noisy? I read an article that I can't find now that spoke of at least one of the production years having real noisy pickups.


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Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 8:54 am
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Noisy as in microphonic noise or static type noise? It's possible that there might be some questionable solder joints. I don't see how a passive pickup could be noisy except for maybe microphonic or noisy because the p'ups are being influenced by external things like light dimmers, flourescent lights, etc . There's virtually no current going through them to speak of and current passing through a circuit is what causes most noise when the noise isn't being influenced by outside stuff.


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Post subject: Noise as in needs shielding
Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 10:49 pm
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I am guessing it is the noise one gets when the guitar needs shielding. But the noise is so pronounced that I suspect that maybe the pickup isn't the best.


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Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 11:13 pm
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This is the sort of thing that I'd reverse engineer. Replace the jack first and work backwards until you found the issue.

Could be one of about 20 things. Pots, cap, solder joint, pickup, jack, wiring, bad bridge ground...anything. Second generation P-basses usually are really quiet and while they do benefit a little from shielding, the benefit is not as dramatic as on a non-humbucking pickup arrangement like a Second Generation P-bass. Mike's bass apparently has something copper shielding alone wouldn't cure.

I just copper shielded my '54 Franken P yesterday by the way. Wow. Way quieter. But I can still tell when the computer monitor is on. I used it in a room with florescent lighting tonight for about 3 hours. Dead quiet.

If Mike's was noisy enough to post about the issue then this is something other than simple RFI which is all shielding can reduce.

I'd reverse engineer in this order. 1. Check bridge ground, 2. Check all solder joints are intact and firm. 3. Replace the jack with a Switchcraft jack, 3. Replace the cap, 4. Replace the pots. 5. Replace the pickup. I'd use new wire too. The pushback cloth wire works great and is super to work with. After each step I'd check to see if that fixed it.

You can check the pickup by wiring it directly to the jack bypassing the pots and cap altogether and use some alligator clip jump leads for that. That will tell you if it is the pickup or the controls. An 83 pickup would be starting to degenerate a bit about now anyway. So it wouldn't shock me to learn it was the pickup but usually pickups don't get noisy...they just start fading in output level...so I'm leaning toward the electronics.

This is really the sort of time it would be a good idea to have a tech look at. It can be fixed of course but the problem is knowing what to fix!


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