Pickup squeals when I touch it

[Falkner]

I've had an odd thing happening with my Yamaha RBXA5. If my finger happens to touch the metal blade of the neck pickup, it emits a high pitched squealing sound. The bridge pickup doesn't do it nor do any of the pickups on my other basses, so I'm assuming that it's not normal at all. The effect seems to be less strong if I have my fingers on the strings. Could it be a grounding issue of some sort?

[SGD Lutherie]

The problem is that they didn't ground the blade. This is common problem on many pickups. So touching it induces noise into the pickup, and when you are touching the strings, you are making that ground connection, so it's not as loud.

If the bottom of the blade is accessible under the pickup, you can try to stick some copper grounding tape to it (if it has conductive adhesive, like the kind sold at Stew-Mac), and ground that tape. That should prevent that from happening.

If you can't access the blade, you have to just try and not touch it.

[Falkner]

Thanks, I'll take a look at that and hope that it's an easy fix.

[DavePlaysBass]

Put a piece of black electrical tape over the side that is close to where your thumb sits. It is barely noticable. I do this on my five string because I like to use the B string as a thumb rest and from time to time I hit the pole pieces on the pups.