Hisssss......

[Jeff Mills]

I had a hiss coming from my bass that I was bound and determined to stop. I isolated it do a fully functioning mini switch. I soldered a ground wire to it's case side which stopped the hiss. Soldering the wire to the case was not easy - I had to sand the metal case a little first for flux and solder to stick.

Anyways, I've not had to ground out a mini switch before, so I found it odd. Besides the obvious (bad switch) what else could have been causing the problem? Did I just treat the symptom or did I fix the root of the problem?

The switch is for stereo / mono cable selection. on one side of the mini switch are 2 volume pots for two pickups on the other side is a switchcraft stereo jack.

the hiss was present even with the volume and tone pots off and with different mono / stereo cables. in Stereo it hissed out of both channels, which again is very odd.

Custom wiring - I can upload the diagram if it would help.

Thanks

[SGD Lutherie]

All switches and pots should be grounded or they will pick up interference.

The easiest way to do this is to put some copper foil down in the control compartment first, and then ground that. they poke holes in it where the switches and pots go, and they will come into contact with it and be grounded.

Another easy way to ground a switch like that is to wrap a grounded wire around it where it passes though the bass or pickguard so that the metal shaft touches it. They also sell washes with grounding tabs for this purpose.

And you were actually getting buzzing, not hissing.