Pickups connected direct = problem.

[Florox]

I currently have my Q-Tuners connected directly to the jack on my bass. When I did it the first time, it had this horrible ground problem that came whenever I wasn't touching the strings. Figures, it's that the ground is connected to the bridge, so I disconnect it. I still get bad hum, although not louder-than-tone hum, but bad hum. It's very noticeable, and it makes it hard to concentrate. 30% of the hum I can kill by grabbing the end of my cable connected to the jack, for obvious reasons. Is there any way to cure this? My Q-Tuners are the singles, by the way.

[luzceloffan]

The cavity in your bass is shielded o painted with nickel based paint? if no, then You need to shield the pickup cavities to avoid interferences and have a better grounding.

[Florox]

The shielding tutorial here on Talkbass is missing it's pictures, so in simple terms, how am I going to go around this? Do I just put copper-foil in the caivites or what?

[luzceloffan]

In basic terms, yes, that's what You have to do, what bass You have? jazz bass, p bass, other model? in some case You will need to shield the pickguard too and let some foil on the edges of the pickup cavity, so the foil in the pickguard will touch the foil on the cavity making a kind of cage to protect pickup up.

I hope this will help You.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ClMY...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4nNY...eature=related

P.S. Based on guitar, but is the same principle for bass.

[Florox]

It's a jazz. I have left all the pots in the cavity even though I have the pickups connected directly. Might this create a problem?

[luzceloffan]

Did you remove completely the wires of the pots? or just cutted them from the pups and jack and went direct? If you used a longer wire to join the pickups wire to the jack wires, did you isolated it with tape or termofit? if not, then thats a problem.

[luzceloffan]

Also ... how did You wired both pickups directly??? a pic would he helpful, so maybe there's a short.

[FunkMetalBass]

I'm assuming that Q-tuners use the typical two-wire, white/black combination.

White pickup wires to the jack tip.
Bridge ground and the black pickup wires to the sleeve. It also wouldn't hurt to shield the cavity, but your pickups are humbucking so there shouldn't be any problems there.

The bridge ground should be connected. The fact that it was and you still had hum tells me that the ground problem is elsewhere.

[Samsound]

It also sounds to me like the PU cavities were already shielded, but they're still connected to the pots, which are no longer connected to the circuit.