Need advice on feedbacks.

[lokiregnarok]

Hi

My guitar has some problems. It's a squier strat (SSS). When I play clean, it is not much of a problem. But when i change to overdrive channel, there's a lot buzzing noises, except when I change to the 2nd & 4th position in the pickup switch. The 5th position (the bridge pickups alone) produces a lot of buzzing noise. I thought it was the problem of my Amp cos when i use the school's amp, there wasn't such a problem. But then when i join it to my pedal or my fren's amp, the noise is back. So my conclusion is.... it has to do with the pickup or the guitar. Can some one give me any idea of how to solve such a problem?
It's very very annoying to play with all the noises

 

[Jumpin'Jellybean]

How old is the guitar? Could it be there is a wiring fault?
If it is brand new, or you are sure there is no wiring fault, then...
Single coils are affected by the hum cycle. Generally most single coils will produce hum, especially when there is high gain. Most metal/high gain guitarists thus prefer to use humbucking guitars. The solutions? Get reverse wound pickups, or noiseless pickups. An alternative would be to do hum shielding on the cavities.
If you do not want to do changes to the guitar, you can get a noise gate. Be wary, however, as a noise gate may colour your tone.

 

[lokiregnarok]

The guitar is not even half a years old. just 3 months old. I am not so sure if there is any wiring fault though. It doesn't seems so.
What brand of pickups i should buy and install then?

 

[Jumpin'Jellybean]

You have to try those pickups you want. There are noiseless kinds, reverse wound, humbucking single coils... can go shops ask. It all depends on the tones you want.

 

[PatheinRaindropMoe]

heh, so fast want to spend money liao, even before finding out whats the problem?

What if spend money liao, but still have problem? Spend more money and buy new thing to try?

 

[EugeneSmasher]

It could be the shielding of the electronics. Was watching a video on youtube by a dude called Dnometalgtr, and he showed the difference between a well-shielded Carvin and a poorly-shielded Jackson. Very informative. Apparently, poor shielding will result in a lot of feedback.

So don't straight away assume it's the pickups... usually it's the shielding. As shown in the video, even a high-end Jackson guitar can have poor shielding and thus lead to lots of feedback. That Jackson guitar had high-end Seymour Duncan pickups in it. But it had lots of feedback anyway.

 

[Jumpin'Jellybean]

Shielding... I heard they use aluminium foil. 'Coat' the cavity with it.

 

[Likui]

standard issue what you use 3 single coils sure have humming noise, position 2 and 4 because of the reverse polarity of the pickup then it will cancel the noise. There's nothing wrong with your guitar, if there is no noise but position 2 and 4 have noise then there's something wrong, if there's no noise at all also something wrong. Ya lor i say get noise gate. However do not use the noise gate to completely eliminate all the noise because the sound that comes out u definately won't like it, just reduce the noise.

 

[lokiregnarok]

heh, so fast want to spend money liao, even before finding out whats the problem?

What if spend money liao, but still have problem? Spend more money and buy new thing to try?

Thx for the reminder. I won't buy it straight away unless i know the cause =).

Eugene. It was very helpful. Thx. U have any suggestion if tat has been the case? sry man. i m quite noob in gears.

 

[EugeneSmasher]

Shielding... I heard they use aluminium foil. 'Coat' the cavity with it.

I don't think aluminum foil is stock-installed, they use some sort of black paint. But I've heard of people using aluminum foil and getting good results in noise reduction. A cheap and good way to handle the noise.

 

[PatheinRaindropMoe]

the black paint thingy is carbon based conductive paint. The idea of shielding is to create a box within the pots/pickup cavity so that stray/external radio frequencies thats around us(invisible) wont find its way into the signal path of our geetar, which can be heard as noise, static sound etc.

reason behind this "box" like shielding is technically known as a faraday cage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage

Anyway, for proper shielding most will suggest either carbon paint or copper tape. For copper tape, its more proper as it can be soldered to the ground connection. If using aluminium foil, it wont take soldering lead, so will need to find ways to electrically connect ground connection from the wiring to this shielded aluminium surface.

For carbon paint, those that i have seen, used screw and washer to get connect to ground.

Anyway, if wanna use aluminium foil, theres a aluminium adhesive tape which can be gotten from homefix that can be pasted all over the cavity for shielding purpose and still electrically connected.

Oh, and shielding is not magic, it wont do wonders if there are other noise source(single coil hum, huge gain, loud volume etc). The geetar signal chain is made out of lotsa path, from pickup through the pots, selector switch, cable, effect, cables before hitting the amp. So imho, if really wanna eliminate noise issue(hum, feedback, static etc), will need to spend time and effort to find out whats possible or impossible with our gear, before spending more money to add in new things, so that we can take out another thing.

 

[EugeneSmasher]

^ This! Great info!