Leaderboard

Noise. The Search Continues.

The wiring of the jack looks right to me as far as I can tell too. :icon_scratch:  The multimeter may be your only hope for locating an unseen problem.  I think back to a guy named nicholasdaniel on this forum that had a similar problem and was wiring two p-rails.  Ultimately, his problem was the wiring on the three-way switch was wrong, and he had a few bad solder joints to reheat before his noise went away.  I had wired my 5-way switch backwards too recently, and I owe it to how I drew it in my diagram.  I basically had my bridge on the common output, and the real output was with the rest of the pickups being selected...very nasty sounding.  I figured this out before I even put strings on it, by tapping on the pickups.  Although I bet you are frustrated,  don't give up, and don't overlook anything, the problem could be right under your noise.  You will find it.
 
A multi meter helps a lot with trouble shooting.  You can plug in a cord and use the continuity checker (the one that makes noise when you touch the leads together) and touch the black to the sleeve of the cord, then use the red to check everything.  Pots, strings, and so on.  If it beeps it is grounded.  I also wired my tele switch backwards when I wired that one.  In the middle position, there was no pickup sound, but a huge amount of hum.  Turns out that the Seymour Duncan switch in the diagram was a mirror image of my switch.  Flipped everything around and it worked.  Quiet as well.  Good luck.
Patrick

 
Multimeter finally arrived. (factory in china closed over christmas but is supposedly good so i waited patiently). Watched a few youtube videos on how to use it. I compared different parts of guitar with red probe and touched black probe to metal tele control plate and also to shaft of input jack. Below are readings.
Tele bridge plate to control plate : variable readings from 008 to 040 though some areas of plate had no high numbers and no continuity beep   
tele bridge to jack : same as above
vol pot, tone pot and all connections starting and finishing within control cavity had readings of 001-002.
P-rail mounting screw to ground 003
Bridge pickup mounting screw varied between the 3 screws. 001-003
could not get reading from middle SSL-6 mounting screws at all
Was unsure how to get reading from pickup body  to common ground.
I assume this means bridge plate not grounded properly. I wedged wire under plate( roughened under-surface but maybe I need to solder to it instead.Any thoughts
 
You might want to solder that bridge wire anyway if you can.  When you say 008 or 040, I am assuming that the meter is displaying 0.08 and 0.40 ohms. :icon_scratch:  To read the ground for the pickup body would be the same.  I know the metal back of the P-rail is ground, but not so sure about the other, you can just read the shield and ground wire on the pickup cable if you are in doubt.  If the leads came with aligator clip attachments, use them, so you can clip the black one to a ground wire, leaving just one moving probe, which eliminates most false readings.  It is easy to touch the same spot twice in a different way and get a different reading, and it is also possible that the pressure from you touching the bridge with the probe is making or breaking the ground connection.  That may be why you are getting different readings.  If none of that works, here comes the fun part, you may have to litterally use that meter to verify the entire conductive path for each pickup, all the way out to the jack.  The control cavity seems really solid from what you described, go figure you would have problems with noise.
 
Basically have taken guitar apart(neck had to come off to get pickguard off) checked nearly every connection.soldered ground wire to roughened under surface of bridge plate.when checked continuity, get reading of 000(no decimal points on my readout) off plate close to wire, as well as mounting screws and saddles on bridge.however if I touch plate further away from wire,reading is poor.also noticed no continuity from mid lug of tone pot to lug that capacitor is connected to.ie across capacitor.is this normal.
 
No. A reading of 0 indicates no resistance. That is, a short or "continuity". An "open" circuit should read infinite resistance, and shows up as a "1" at the extreme left followed by blanks on most digital meters.
 
When I use the continuity meter I go by the sound.  Anything down around 10 ohms is not really going to effect much, it is probably whatever is between the meter probe and a good connection.  For the bridge, I like the guitar strings, or the bolts that adjust string height.  They tend to not have plating or plastic on them and it is easier to get contact.  If one of those has no resistance to ground, then the whole thing is probably good.  The problem tends to be the probe making good contact.  I take the finish off the bottom of the bridge with my Dremel.  I don't solder to the bridge, just a contact thing, and it has worked for me.  Caps should read infinite resistance across them.  If you are using the backs of the pots, I always have a section I sanded a bit on them.  Some folks don't like soldering to pots around here, I have never had a prob with it.  But, I use my Dremel with the sanding wheel to scour up a spot to solder to.  The scouring is a good place to check ground.  I tend to like to read everything against the sleeve or ground on the cord, because that will be your ground connection when plugged in.
Patrick

 
Just to spell it out for my simple mind,there should be no continuity beep across capacitor.
 
leejord said:
Just to spell it out for my simple mind,there should be no continuity beep across capacitor.
Click to expand...

Right, :icon_thumright:, but there is a wierd interaction there, here goes:  If you use the plain ohm meter it may read a short (low ohms) for a short moment, then the resistance starts increasing then stops.  The capacitor in this case is charging from the voltage off the ohmmeter, when it's fully charged, it appears as an open connection to a DC voltmeter.  With the continuity meter, and I don't know if yours will show ohms at the same time, there is a certain threshold the meter has to designate anything at or below a certain amount of ohms is a short.  It is good for instant confirmation, but it may not tell you the whole story in terms of ohms.  So long story short, the continuity meter might beep for a brief second then stop as you continue to hold the leads across the capacitor.  I have never seen a modern cap go bad in a passive guitar circuit, I wouldn't rule that out, but very unlikely.
 
I'm at work right now, and I just confirmed it.  The meter beeps for a sec, then stops.  As long as the cap holds the charge it won't beep again the next time you do it.  If the capacitor behaves this way, you know it's good and not opened or shorted.  I am not sure how everything is working for you other than a little noise, or a lot, but try this:  With your continuity meter check your selector switch, and make sure the common output is in fact wired to the output, and the selector terminals are hooked into the pickups.  The guitar may work haphazard and noisy like when I accidently did it wrong.  You can verify this by leaving one lead on the common terminal, then moving the other lead to other terminals as you are moving the switch.  If the continuity to the output lead that you have gets disrupted every time you move the switch, meaning you have to move both leads to find the continuity, then there is one problem identified. Der :tard:, I just read back to what you had written before:  If the values in ohms that you are getting are 1 to 8 ohms or even 40 ohms, your grounding is in deep crap.  It doesn't sound like the bridge is very conductive, but don't worry.  When you are measuring between points don't worry too much about long runs that will have resistance anyway, like from the bridge to the pickup mounting screws.  I would try the black lead on the control plate or whatever is most readily grounded to it, then touch the other lead on the extremities like the bridge, then the output jack, and any other point considered ground within the control cavity.  If you can't see anything much less than 1 ohm, other than the bridge, you may need some copper ground wire to the bridge, jack, and other connections within the control cavity.  The bridge could be chrome plated copper, and you might have to get to the copper to make a good connection.  A six inch piece of copper won't even register as an ohms reading on my meter, so try to widdle those numbers down.  My methods for grounding are a little anal, but they have treated me to very quiet guitars.  I hope you fix it, and keep giving us updates, the more heads, the better.
 
I wish it was string.at least then I would know where problem is.I think I've actually made noise worse.now noise louder with tone knob fully open.with this multimeter for continuity test,readout shows 1 before probes touching anything and then changes with probes in place. With red probe on tone centre lug and black on ground ring that other arm of  cap attached to- no change in value, no beep at all. Frustrating. Spending more time on wiring than actually playing
By the way. If every other (besides cap) connection beeps continuously and reads 000 when compared to shaft of connected guitar lead, does that mean jack is wired correctly
 
leejord said:
I wish it was string.at least then I would know where problem is.I think I've actually made noise worse.now noise louder with tone knob fully open.with this multimeter for continuity test,readout shows 1 before probes touching anything and then changes with probes in place. With red probe on tone centre lug and black on ground ring that other arm of  cap attached to- no change in value, no beep at all. Frustrating. Spending more time on wiring than actually playing
By the way. If every other (besides cap) connection beeps continuously and reads 000 when compared to shaft of connected guitar lead, does that mean jack is wired correctly
Click to expand...

Yesir, if you are getting a short to the ground shaft portion of the jack from ground, then the jack is wired correctly.  The good news is if the noise is worse, then the problem will become more apparent and is easyer to fix. Moving wires and poking around are probably making bad connections worse. I wouldn't bother with the cap, just verify that the lead to ground is grounded.  If it wasn't working then your tone knob would be more like a vol knob, or do nothing at all.  Use the extra noise as an indicator for where the problem is at, the noise may drop quite a bit or get worse if you touch it.  Don't get too worked up over it, sometimes you got to walk away from it for a while, then come back, which you prob have done several times. :sad:  Another idea:  check continuity of each soldered wire end to end, thoroughly, even again after a wiggle.  There may be a broken wire in there somewhere.
 
I think I may have waited 8 weeks for a "not sensitive enough multimeter". I re-read instructions and meter gives continuity beep if resistance less than 50 ohm.there is no decimal point so a reading of 1 could still mean a poor connection? Even reading of 0 might be really 0.8 which I take it is no good
 
Oh S@#t, I was afraid of that from your description.  Is it strictly a continuity meter with a half-ass ohms readout together?  Whatever the thing is, you can pickup a better one at a hardware store with $20 or $30.  Anything that doesn't read less than 1 ohm would definately pess me off.  No, that so-called multimeter isn't helping your cause, unfortunately.
 
Strangely, it does have decimal point for some functions.if u go to www.radioparts.com.au and enter code number 44488098. Called DM830L or MSA830L
 
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