Trying to diagnose the buzz/hum/ground noise

[jimmyjamesmuzik]

Hey i gotta slight buzz/hum coming from my Dean ml dimebag tribute guitar. i just put a seymour duncan dimebucker pickup in the bridge. all my grounds and solder joints look fine and i have continuity all over the guitar... when i touch the metal on the toggle switch, the jack input, the bridge and strings and the neck pickup the buzz/hum goes away.. i replaced the pot and resoldered it again for that pick up and still get buzz.. any ideas? I have tested my 2 other guitars on the same amp and patch chord to make sure they arent the issue aswell.. Im kinda stumped now lol. any help is greatly appreciated
should add that the noise does get louder when i touch the pickup i installed or if i touch the height adjustment screws for the pickup but it gets quieter if i touch the height adjustment screws on the neck pickup (stock i didnt change neck pickup the stock pickup has a metal baseplate but the new dimebucker the screws go into a plastic baseplate) but if i touch the strings the noise goes away then i can touch the pick up i get no noise... ive taped any piece of wire that cud possibly touch anything to ground out aswell. im stumped lol
the hum/buzz/noise disapears when you turn the volume pot to zero or when you turn the tone down to zero...
Any ideas anyone? lol thanks in advance

 

[Alicia Willis]

*TURNS ON THE CAPTAIN ED SIGNAL* @Ed Seith

 

[Ed Seith]

Hey i gotta slight buzz/hum coming from my Dean ml dimebag tribute guitar. i just put a seymour duncan dimebucker pickup in the bridge. all my grounds and solder joints look fine and i have continuity all over the guitar... when i touch the metal on the toggle switch, the jack input, the bridge and strings and the neck pickup the buzz/hum goes away.. i replaced the pot and resoldered it again for that pick up and still get buzz.. any ideas? I have tested my 2 other guitars on the same amp and patch chord to make sure they arent the issue aswell.. Im kinda stumped now lol. any help is greatly appreciated
should add that the noise does get louder when i touch the pickup i installed or if i touch the height adjustment screws for the pickup but it gets quieter if i touch the height adjustment screws on the neck pickup (stock i didnt change neck pickup the stock pickup has a metal baseplate but the new dimebucker the screws go into a plastic baseplate) but if i touch the strings the noise goes away then i can touch the pick up i get no noise... ive taped any piece of wire that cud possibly touch anything to ground out aswell. im stumped lol
the hum/buzz/noise disapears when you turn the volume pot to zero or when you turn the tone down to zero...
Any ideas anyone? lol thanks in advance

If the buzz goes away when you touch it, then it's usually a grounding issue. Since it goes away when the volume is turned down on the guitar, it's definitely in the guitar. Do you have the whole wiring setup grounded to a metal contact point outside the wiring loops? In a Floyd guitar, the ground is usually soldered to the spring claw, but if it's fixed bridge it should be to something else. Without a ground, YOU are the ground, hence it going away when you touch it.

 

[jimmyjamesmuzik]

If the buzz goes away when you touch it, then it's usually a grounding issue. Since it goes away when the volume is turned down on the guitar, it's definitely in the guitar. Do you have the whole wiring setup grounded to a metal contact point outside the wiring loops? In a Floyd guitar, the ground is usually soldered to the spring claw, but if it's fixed bridge it should be to something else. Without a ground, YOU are the ground, hence it going away when you touch it.

is there a way i can diagnose which is my ground problem? or should i just re solder every ground on my guitar? also im not sure what you mean by outside the wiring loop. ill take some pictures and label whats what but basically each ground looks like its soldered to a pot.

 

[Ed Seith]

There should be one wire that goes from a pot (usually the tone pot, I think, but don’t know if it matters) to a piece of metal completely outside of the signal path. (I said wiring loop instead of signal path because I couldn’t think of the term).

 

[jimmyjamesmuzik]

There should be one wire that goes from a pot (usually the tone pot, I think, but don’t know if it matters) to a piece of metal completely outside of the signal path. (I said wiring loop instead of signal path because I couldn’t think of the term).

This is the bridge pot I soldered for my pickup. its a new pot i replaced it to see if that would fix the buzz.
this is the wiring diagram for the pickups
neck pickup pot
Tone Pot
I found this wrapped in tape. it goes from the toggle switch to the bridge pot. the ground wire has continuity on my multimeter tho
This is what it looked stock before i did the pickup replacement.

So i think the grey wire on the tone pot goes to the input jack and carries a hot and ground.
the big thick back wire is the pickup i installed u can see i taped the ground wires and the red and white wires that are soldered together.(like the diagram says to do.) 1 thing i notice is that the .047 cap on the diagram is soldered to the middle prong on the pot but on my guitar its on the bottom prong like the rest of the grounds on other pots.

 

[jimmyjamesmuzik]

if those pictures are crap i can try and get better ones. but i had an idea, can i unsolder the pickup i installed then try plugging in the guitar to see if it still has a buzz? cuz if it doesnt buzz after dissconnecting the pickup maybe the pickup or my soldering is the issue? im not expert but my solder joints seem solid i cant pull them apart..

 

[Ed Seith]

There are multiple pickups, right? Does it buz when the switch is on all the different combinations?

In your wiring diagram, there is (lower center) "Ground wire from bridge" soldered to the bridge pickup tone pot. Is that connection good? Also, the solder on pickup wiring is very finicky. I stopped trying to do my own because I suck at it and it frustrates me too quickly.

 

[jimmyjamesmuzik]

ya u hear the buzz no matter what position the toggle switch is in. the toggle switch seems to work fine tho it doesnt make any wierd noises and switches pickups correctly.. the ground wire from the bridge im not sure which one it is tbh.. maybe i should try and trace out all the wires and or just re do everything

 

[Ed Seith]

If you can't find the ground wire, maybe you forgot it?

 

[jimmyjamesmuzik]

i was under the impression that if you touch something metal and the buzz goes away that isnt the problem but if you touch something and it gets louder then that is the problem. is this true to your knowledge?

 

[jimmyjamesmuzik]

If you can't find the ground wire, maybe you forgot it?

only wires i soldered on was the hot and the ground for the pickup i installed and it did it in the same place as the old pickup i removed.. i need to locate wheres the ground wire to the bridge then trace it back to which pot its soldered too. i think its the little black wire on the neck pot if i was to guess i just dont know where it connects to the bridge. but i think i can count 7 or 8 grounds on all the pots.

 

[jimmyjamesmuzik]

also i have continuity on the multi meter from all pots to the bridge and from all ground wires i can see and touch to the bridge. so im assume my bridge ground isnt dissconnected or the multimeter would tell me... this is why im soo puzzled

 

[Little Laguna05]

Well I will write these down in notes so I can be more smert

 

[Christopher Lonski]

Do you have a multimeter? There is a super easy way to diagnose it if you have one.

 

[jimmyjamesmuzik]

Do you have a multimeter? There is a super easy way to diagnose it if you have one.

ya i have a multimeter and it says i got continuity all over the guitar thats why im so puzzled... i wonder if when it was made in china if it was wired correctly then because tbh i dont remember if it had buzz/hum before i replaced the pickup because it had a loose input jack and wud cut out all the time. after i replaced that and the pickup is when i noticed the hum.. im thinking i need to run a ground wire from pot to pot in the diagram you can see theres a ground running seperate from pot to pot and mine never had that. i opened up my jackson kelly and its gotta ground running from pot to pot. i think its the ground loop?

 

[jimmyjamesmuzik]

I think this is more accurate for my wiring setup. notice a ground wire runs from volume to volume to tone in like a horseshoe shape? my wiring setup never had this so maybe this is my issue? also the ground and .047 cap from the tone pot are on the middle prong and on my guitar its soldered on the left prong of the tone. i wonder if these are issues maybe ill try swapping them around?

 

[jimmyjamesmuzik]

this is the jackson wiring and it doesnt buzz/hum you can see the pots are wired together

this is how my dean was wired before the pickup install. no ground connecting the pots. maybe this is my issue?

 

[jimmyjamesmuzik]

ran a wire connecting the pots and it made no difference -____- i dunno wtf im doin looks like i gotta go give long and mcquade a million dollars an hour to fix it or just live with the buzz hum -____- wooohooooo