Noisy Lakland 55-01

kevinmoore73 · #1 01-24-2008, 08:32 PM

I've had my Lakland for several months now. I really love it, but for the fact that I recently realized it has a problem. It buzzes like crazy. It doesn't matter what it's plugged into, be it my Pandora, my LMII, or my mixer. I knew it buzzed all along, but thought it was normal. That is, until I got an absolutely silent Jay Turser. The Turser makes no buzzing sounds whatsoever. It's great, except my Lakland is a chainsaw in comparison.

The buzz on my Lakland lessens when I'm touching a metal part of the bass. I see a lot of people say that this is a grounding issue, but I don't believe it is. I get continuity and 0 ohms resistance between the input jack and all metal pieces on the bass. I have also checked all of the grounding and it appears to be fine.

I believe that leaves me with a shielding issue. I got the Stewmac shielding kit over the holidays, but once I dug in and got to work, I realized it didn't come with enough foil to do my whole bass. Currently the control cavity and cover is completely shielded with the foil, leaving the rest of the bass' pickup routes and wire tunnels in an unknown state. I say unknown state because I haven't removed the pickups to look behind them.

The control cavity appeared to have some shielding paint applied at the factory, though the application was very inconsistent. I could see through it in spots. I'm guessing the pickup routes and other areas look the same way.

I recently received a can of shielding paint from Stewmac. I'm going to remove the foil and try the paint throughout the whole bass in an attempt to eliminate the buzz.

So, after all of that I guess my questions are these: Do you think that a thorough application of shielding paint to all cavities and routes will eliminate the buzz? If not, what would you do next? Is it possible I have another type of grounding issue, even though everything appears to be connected properly? Is there an inherent buzziness with the 55-01's Bartolini MK-1 pickups?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

kevinmoore73 · #2 01-25-2008, 01:06 PM

Bump for help.

Gecko 5 · #3 01-26-2008, 11:47 PM

Did you buy it new or used ?
If you call them you can probably get some good input from them . They are very helpful .
pm'd

kevinmoore73 · #4 01-27-2008, 01:53 AM

It's a 2002 that I bought used this summer.

kevinmoore73 · #5 01-28-2008, 02:21 PM

Bump.

I spent the day yesterday disassembling the bass and coating the insides with multiple coats of shielding paint. I even coated the route for the battery.

While waiting for each coat to dry, I did some more reading about grounding and shielding. I now have a couple theories, but here's some background info first: The pickup routes had a ground wire screwed into them. Each of these wires went to a different ground location from each other. That location was also different than where the pickups and bridge were grounded. It was like each ground-able item was grounded to the nearest pot. Pickups themselves to volume pot, bridge to bass pot, pickup routes to mid and treble pots. Also, I noticed that each pot has a wire running from its back to the back of another pot.

So, my theories are this: I have many ground loops causing problems, and I should star-ground everything. The pickup routes were acting as interference antennas due to the way they were wired.

At one point, I had all of the electronics completely wired up just laying on my workbench. Surprisingly, they were dead silent, even with the treble at max. Before I put them back in tonight, I'd like to verify how they should be connected.

I was planning to combine the pickup grounds at the input jack. The pot bodies will be grounded together via the shielding, and I was planning to remove the redundant connecting wires. The wires that come from the mk1 preamp that are soldered to the pot backs I was going to combine at a single point along with the bridge ground, using a screw and washer into an open portion of the cavity. Should that do it?