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Yesterday I installed a Dream 90 in the bridge of my strat. I removed the old pick-up, cut the pickguard to size, chiseled away some excess wood and wired up the new pick-up.
I soldered the right lead to the right lug of the pick-up switch and the shield and ground were soldered on the back of the volume pot. When I stringed it up again there was an immensen amount of background noise which stopped when you touched anything metal on the guitar. Oh dear....
So the leaflet said that occasionally noises are created by soldering the shield and to remove it if it bothered you. So I removed and taped up the shield and the noise diminished but there is still some there and still when I tap something metal you hear a spark like sound of an electrical circuit closing.
What are things I might have missed? (I might try and get a pic up if I don't solve it today)
Last edited by Monkeyboard on Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
Well, usually there will be a solid wire (completely bare/stripped), that goes from the back of one pot. It's a good rule of thumb to have all grounds go to the same place, but not always necessary. Anyways, generally this grnd wire is routed from the control cavity, through a small hole that leads to the underside of your bridge (have to take it off to see). However, you have a strat, which I will assume has a tremolo bridge. Your grnd wire will likely go to the metal piece behind the backplate that the springs attach to.
Looks fine. I extended it when I changed the pot lay out from neck and middle volume and master tone to master volume master tone but that was a good while ago and I had no problem untill I installed the pick-up.
I'm not sure if I'm looking at it right but it appears that you've got the white wire going to the switch and the red wire soldered to the pot? Is it possible that you've got the wires backwards? The reason I ask is it is very rare for red to be used for a ground wire. The ground wire is usually black or green but I have seen white used too. Also, make sure the pot that you are grounding to is grounded.
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McSpunckle wrote:I really don't see a wire going to the bridge, unless it taps off the output jack (It looks like the one extended is the jack).
It also doesn't look like you soldered the bare wire of that humbucker to anything. It should be grounded, but that would just shield that pickup.
If you have a meter, use it to check if the bridge is connected to the back of the pots.
I'll do that tomorrow. As far as I know there are no other wires going to the bridge so it might tap of the jack. The bare wire is a case shield but the leaflet said sometimes it creates strange hum/hiss/noise so it can be left unconnected. I had it connected first and then took it off which lessened the noise I got but didn't make it disappear.
Also I'm sure the red is ground. The leaflet said White was lead bare was shield and red or black was ground.
Pickups don't care which side you use as the ground, really, so long as all the pickups are in phase. Some use a bare wire that shields the pickup and it'd matter then, but since that isn't the case... yeah. All that would happen is you get really weak, thin signal (which is neat if you have hot pickups).
I've never heard of shielding the pickups making more noise, but I guess I can't argue if they were right!
Definitely just check the ground to the bridge. If the strings were grounded, that probably wouldn't happen.
Ground to the bridge is still there and functioning.
However I have found out something I can't explain at all.
The stopping of the noise by touching something metal can only be done by someone who holds the guitar at some point (which can be metal or wood). If someone holds the guitar and someone else touches something metal the noise remains.
It's like there's a whole new circuit which loops from something metal into me and then back into the guitar again.
I really have no clue so this is my last shot before I pay someone.
