Grounding Issue - Switches?

[exalted]

I have a guitar with two mustang-style switches on the treble horn. On-Off-On, eight terminals.

The guitar has serious buzzing problems. I just couldn't get rid of them, so I took it to a luthier and had him wire the guitar with new pots, switches, and pickups. It still buzzes. He says the problem is the switches themselves. He said they're cheap, and guitar makers don't use that type any more for good reason. I can't seem to find 'high quality' versions of these. The ones I have are Allparts.

Should I just drill a hole for an LP toggle switch in the control cavity and be done with it? It's a front-routed guitar, so I'm hesitant to do anything permanent to it, but at this point, I guess a good sounding guitar is probably more important.

 

[exalted]

Or should I just buy a noise gate?

 

[dbw]

I assume you meant rear-routed...

I can't believe the noise is coming from switches.  Try wiring the switches out of the circuit and see if the noise disappears.

 

[tfarny]

Allparts stuff is good, and why would a switch 'buzz'? Are you sure it's not just your basic single coil hum? Are you sure it's not your amp?  I agree, just bypass the switches and see what happens. Another tech who sounds like he knows beer pong better than guitars...

 

[exalted]

Sorry, it is indeed rear-routed.

The guy I took it to has been a luthier for 35ish years, so I'm not sure beer pong is his thing.  :laughing3:

But I will go ahead and take the switches out of the circuit to see if that helps. That's a good recommendation.

And it's a double-humbucker guitar, so it shouldn't be 60-cycle hum, right? But anyway, it's two or three different types of buzzing/humming on top of eachother. I can eliminate some with some pickup combos, and some goes away when I'm playing.

I'm also confident it's not the amp/cable, as I'm having the problem on two amps, four different cables.

 

[GoDrex]

what do the switches do? if you're doing splitting then you're going to get some hum.

 

[exalted]

The switches are my pickup selectors. One also is a phase reversal, the other also is a coil split.

Before, I had them wired up with just straight inputs (on-off), and there was still a lot of buzz.

My Schecter used to have coil taps, and it wasn't even 25% as bad as this. This is BAD. It's nearly unplayable when I throw the distortion on.

 

[Part-Time]

Can you post some pictures, I will do my best to diagnose from that. I believe you slector switch may be the culprit with bad gounding. Tape a ground wire to it and see if it stops.

 

[exalted]

Hi Part-Time,

I finally had some time to put into my guitar, and tried grounding the switches as you suggested. It didn't seem to make a difference.

I unsoldered the pickups so I could remove the switches from the circuit, and one of the damned things broke. But when I did wire the pup directly into the circuit, it seemed to greatly reduce the noise...

So I'm just going to say screw it and drill a hole in the control cavity for an LP switch.