Static Sound with Guitar

[MSP]

Hi there.  I have a Strat-style guitar that makes a crackling kind of noise when I brush my fingers on anything other than the strings or bridge. Even if I rub my fingers on the body it does the sound.  But otherwise it doesn't buzz or hum at all.  However, since I pick with my hand open, my fingers brush the scratchplate and so there is low-level crackling all the time.  It does this in all pickup positions, even the noise-cancelling ones.

Any ideas of what this could be? I confess that my sodlering ability is nothing to boast about, so it's possible that there is a bad joint or something.

Thanks!

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

It is static from the pickguard.  Create a drain with shielding tape going to ground.  Teles are famous for it.  My buddy's LP plastic control cavity cover does it too.

 

[mayfly]

Yep. That's what it is.

 

[MSP]

Thanks, guys!

Uhh, what's a drain?  :-\  You mean living the pickguard with tape and then soldering a wire to ground?

 

[line6man]

Thanks, guys!

Uhh, what's a drain?  :-\  You mean living the pickguard with tape and then soldering a wire to ground?

A "drain" allows a theoretically infinite flow of electrons a low impedance path to the ground potential.

Cover the back of the pickguard with either a sheet of aluminum, or copper tape, and then extend a piece of your shielding from the pickup cavity or control cavity to the area around a pickguard screw, to ground the metal.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Just sticking shieding tape to the pickguard and mounting the pots to it is good enough to ground it, if your pots are grounded, and they should be.  It's called a drain, because like a sink that is stopped up, water is analogous to static.  Attaching the statically charged plastic to a grounded surface allows it to drain like water.

 

[stubhead]

And if you want to cowboy it, just filch a few of those laundry "anti-static-cling" sheets from... somewhere, and rub 'em on your pickguard, problem solved. Eventually, they seem to get over it on their own, I would guess from some combination of sweat, dirt and... mojo? The world was a grim and brutal place, back when static cling was running amuck among the populace.

 

[MSP]

Thanks for the replies!  I like the visual of the sink and drain--that helped me to understand it.

I took a quick video with my phone this morning, because I thought you guys might like to see what is going on.  Annoyingly, it behaved itself when I brushed against the pickguard, but check out what happens when I rub the finish on the back of the guitar.  Weird! 

HERE is a link to the clip.  Give it a couple minutes to load into the browser window; it's a bit slow.