What's up you guys!
So I recently bought this beautiful ES 335 type MIJ with a floating bridge that I dated to some time in the 60s. But theres some pretty bad static coming out of it and it bothered me so much that I decided to join this forum for some helpful advice. The biggest difficulty I'm having is deciding whether it's a grounding issue or just 60hz hum. Here's what I know so far:
~I checked all the components and they seem to be grounded correctly (I'm new to this stuff so maybe I did something wrong but the multimeter said 0 ohms of resistance between every component I checked)
~When the tone knob(s) are down the static isn't audible, and it increases as i turn them back up (it has two single coil pickups, a volume and tone pot dedicated to each, and a 3-way switch)
~When I plug in my strat or bass there is no static (that's why I have a hard time believing it's 60hz hum from some outside source, or that the building I'm in isn't grounded)
~moving the guitar around has no effect on the static (again another reason I don't think it's 60hz)
~I checked the cord and the amp and neither of those were the issue.
I've read so any threads and looked up so many videos trying to solve the issue, I even asked my local repair guy for some advice to no avail. I'd love to use this thing to record because it sounds great, but the static drives me nuts! I appreciate you're help you guys! Keep on rockin'!
sounds like it might be a bad capacitor on the tone pot.
To check for earthing, physically touch anything metal whilst the guitar is plugged in. touch the outer ring of the output jack, the back of the pots, the rim of the switch etc, if the hum goes away, its possible you have an earth leak somewhere.
To me it sounds like the cap might have had its last days, try getting that checked or replaced.
An amazing thing has happened over the last couple of weeks. I got a new guitar with some jimmy page wired humbucker. I had the guitar built. Got it home, played like a dream sounded fantastic. Then all of a sudden started to hear an annoying intermittent crackle. I trouble shot everything in the room I think: Have two amps going, two guitars, aby switch, changed cables. I still couldn't isolate the problem. On one guiar(the one with the hummbuckers) I would get short little pop sounds. With my single coil tele I eventually started to get a static type sound when playing. This only happens when I am playing, not when everything is on and not playing. It was going on today. After playing for a few minutes, I unplugged the guitar, went to a different room and plugged into a different little practice amp. There was no noise. I went back and plugged back into the amp in the other room and the noise disappeared and I didnt hear it again. Is it possible there could just be static in the air? I have played in this room for years and never had a problem. I was having the exact same noises coming out of two amps in the room. Can anybody weigh in? Thanks for taking the time to read this.
