Bad earth hum on Fenders

[OutToPlayJazz]

You all know the routine - Leave your Fender plugged in & without touching it, the bad earth demons hit until you touch the strings & it all goes quiet!

My MIM Jazz V was pretty quiet, but the vintage pups on my Geddy Lee Jazz are noisy as hell in this respect - Is there any known cure?

It's particularly bad in my case, as I use a lot of treble, so it's very noticable.

[Deep Thought]

[quote name='OutToPlayJazz' post='47298' date='Aug 19 2007, 10:32 AM']You all know the routine - Leave your Fender plugged in & without touching it, the bad earth demons hit until you touch the strings & it all goes quiet!

My MIM Jazz V was pretty quiet, but the vintage pups on my Geddy Lee Jazz are noisy as hell in this respect - Is there any known cure?

It's particularly bad in my case, as I use a lot of treble, so it's very noticable.[/quote]

This is a handy site, if you are any good at this sort of thing:-

[url="http://www.guitarnuts.com/index.php"]http://www.guitarnuts.com/index.php[/url]

[mhuk]

This may be useful as well:

[url="http://www.talkbass.com/wiki/index.php/Silencing_the_Noise_on_a_Marcus_Miller_Signature_Bass"]http://www.talkbass.com/wiki/index.php/Sil..._Signature_Bass[/url]

[ped]

One way I cured the him in my 57 reissue P bass was to have a piece of tin foil coming from the pickups to the chrome ashtray cover - that way whenever my hand was on the bass the hum stopped. Not ideal but it didn't bother me afterwards. Part of the problem was using Elixir strings because you are not actually touching the metal of the string quite often, so I would get lots of crackle as my finger connected/disconnected with the string.

[movwkd]

The front split coil pickup on my fender USA deluxe precision made a buzz from day one..
I fixed this by carefully taking the pick guard off with the controls visible i ripped off the wires to the front pickup and soldered a Seymour Duncan 1/4 pounder in its place ...
Job done, i then removed the bridge and chucked that in my useless fender parts bin and put a badass 2 bridge on it ..
Fender wood's seem to be brilliant on the USA bass but the other bits are not in the same league as my Rickenbacker..
I presume fender mass produce to such a extent that they don't bother checking what they ship anymore !!

[Bigwan]

As Rick Turner says - "too much shielding is just about enough"!

[Telebass]

Odd...there's no good reason for a split-coil P to hum - it's a humbucking pickup. Unless it's been mis-wired. Jazz basses are fine so long as the relative volumes of the pickups are the same, as they are then also a humbucker, but that doesn't actually help a lot, so it's tinfoil/paint time.
However, as Mr Turner said...

[Telebass]

[quote name='movwkd' post='47462' date='Aug 19 2007, 06:29 PM']i then removed the bridge and chucked that in my useless fender parts bin and put a badass 2 bridge on it ..[/quote]
I cannot imagine what a Badass II is going to improve on a string-thru-body. Mass is meaningless, all you need is a good breakover. The stock bridge does that perfectly...

[Beedster]

[quote name='Telebass' post='49022' date='Aug 22 2007, 03:40 PM']I cannot imagine what a Badass II is going to improve on a string-thru-body. Mass is meaningless, all you need is a good breakover. The stock bridge does that perfectly...[/quote]

Evidence from my Fender string through Precision suggsts otherwise I'm afraid. Much more sustain with a BADASS, perhaps due to less contact between saddle and string or different materials?
However, I'm certainly not sure how a BADASS would effect hum.....
Chris

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

[quote name='OutToPlayJazz' post='47298' date='Aug 19 2007, 05:32 AM']You all know the routine - Leave your Fender plugged in & without touching it, the bad earth demons hit until you touch the strings & it all goes quiet![/quote]
That's as it's supposed to be, and is the reason why the bridge/strings are grounded. It's an unavoidable consequence of high impedance pickups. Some are better/worse than others, but none are immune.