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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on April 27, 2014 at 11:43pm

the way i see the pic Patrick,i think if you swap the wires at the jack you,ll be good,but i,m an electromoron,more advice coming i suspect,good luck

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Permalink Reply by Rand Moore on April 27, 2014 at 11:49pm

I think this is an interesting topic, because I have seen this problem even in a commercially available electric Ukulele. It hums like crazy until I touch the output jack then the signal sounds clean as can be. But, I have trouble playing the instrument and holding the output jack at the same time, so I don't play it that often. My thinking is that it has to do with body capacitance. I saw in Wikipedia that there is a "model" for human body capacitance which was defined by the Electrostatic Discharge Association (ESDA) as being a 100pF capacitor in series with a 1.5kΩ resistor. So I was thinking of trying as an experiment of hooking up such a capacitor and resistor in series between the guitar jack and signal ground to see if that would clean up the signal, but as I'm in China and buying components a rather difficult given my limited Chinese language capacity (especially technical language), I was planning to hold off until I'm back in the States this summer. Since you are having a similar problem, maybe you can try this idea and report on its effectiveness. Thanks.

-Rand.

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Permalink Reply by Scott aka Farmer Ted on April 28, 2014 at 2:09am

The wiring looks as it should, with one exception. There should be an extra ground wire that connects strings to earth/ground. This is due to the physical properties of the single coil pickup and its relationship with the strings, which together act as an anntenea.  They attract disruptive signals from florescent light ballasts, radios and phones. Grounding the strings will make most of the noise go away. Single coil pickups are inherently noisy, but grounding strings will make it as good as it gets.

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Curley on April 28, 2014 at 2:37am

Thanks Scott, does that mean I connect the socket sleeve to the bridge? And I don't need to swap them over?

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Permalink Reply by Scott aka Farmer Ted on April 28, 2014 at 6:45am

Yes, the socket/jack sleeve is ground, and is connected to the lug where the white pickup wire is soldered. If the bridge is not metal, you will need to find another place to get a ground wire connected to make contact with the strings. Sometimes builders do this where the strings run through the tail end of the neck, or at the tailpiece. Most will do this in a manner to hide/obscure the ground wire for aesthetic purposes. Lots of Youtube videos giving examples. Hope this helps.

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Permalink Reply by Chris Carlson on April 28, 2014 at 8:12am

Yeah, Scott's right. I run my string grounds right to the jack and if there's a little bit of hum yet I'll even cover the hot wire with braided shielding on single coils.

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Permalink Reply by David McQueen on April 28, 2014 at 9:14am

Looking at the photo, it appears to be two separate wires from the pickup to the jack. There is probably no shielding. If you can carefully remove the jack, then twist it around so the positive and ground wire wrap around each other an dthen put the jack back in, you will have some twisted pair shielding.

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Permalink Reply by The Capo Kid on April 28, 2014 at 9:21am

 I 'm more concerned by you saying " when I touch my amp " the noise stops ? .

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Curley on April 28, 2014 at 10:25am

Thankyou gentlemen, I'll try all of those things and get back to you. I've ordered a couple of pots and a capacitor  too.

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Curley on April 28, 2014 at 11:05am

Yep. All that has helped although there's more than the usual single coil noise, and it crackles when I use a brass slide.

I'm sorted for now though thank you, when the new electronics arrive I'll put a humbucker in it.

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Permalink Reply by Richey Kay on April 28, 2014 at 5:28pm

If it's still crackling I think that means the strings are still not grounded. How did you go about doing this? Don't give up on single coils Patrick!

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Curley on April 28, 2014 at 6:45pm

Cheers Richey

My soldering iron decided that now would be a good time to pack it in so I've just used electrical tape for now, and a bit of old speaker wire I had laying around so I suspect that you're right there Richey.

I love single coils and I have a few of them, I also have a nice dual rail seymour duncan that I've been dying to fire up. I'll keep this single for another project.

Thanks for your input.

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