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annoying buzz when I raise hands

A

Arranque

Jul 21, 2009
3
0
#1
Hi all!

This is my first post in this forum :bassist:

I have a Fender Jazz Bass - Victor Bailey Signature V. It has Samarium noisless pickups. Each pickup feeded by its own battery.

The problem is that there's a constant buzz whenever I raise my hands and don't play any string, nor the bridge. When I touch the strings again, I hear a light crack and the buzz is gone...

This means when I play hammer on from open strings there are buzzes and cracks sounding behind the notes, what's quite annoying.

I noticed the intensity of the buzz depends on the place I'm playing. It's much louder at home than in the bars I play, so I guess it may depends on the quality of the electric installation of the place... I don't know... but it's always present in one way or another.

Any clue on what's happening here (and how to solve it)?

Any tip will be appreciated!

Thanks in advance
 
#4
Yeah - you're not grounded properly... although this seems to be somewhat a matter of opinion.

I had this problem with a P bass I own - somebody "upgraded" the bridge and didn't attach the ground to the bridge. I took it to a buddy of mine, who happens to be a bit of an old pro...

So he tells me, back in the day, the first thing we used to do was cut that ground wire that goes to bridge... it was a safety hazard. I've been zapped on the lip by a vocal mic while playing bass, but nothing too bad. My buddy, the old pro, said they didn't trust the electrical systems in the venues they played to be properly wired to code or to even have fuses or circuit breakers, so they always snipped that ground wire so they didn't get electrocuted playing some sketchy venue. He swears nobody at the show could ever tell if a guitar or a bass had little buzz and he and everybody he played with felt safer snipping that wire to the bridge.

Any old timers confirm or deny if that's how it was back in the day?

The point I'm trying to make is - sometimes a bass isn't string grounded because the owner didn't want it to be. I do prefer my basses be string grounded, but there is some debate as far as what is "right"

BTW - anybody know who was the classic rock guy that was home sick and was writing songs in the basement and got zapped by a mic playing guitar on a damp basement floor and died? Rare, but it has happened.
 
#5
Arranque said:
Hi all!

This is my first post in this forum :bassist:

I have a Fender Jazz Bass - Victor Bailey Signature V. It has Samarium noisless pickups. Each pickup feeded by its own battery.

The problem is that there's a constant buzz whenever I raise my hands and don't play any string, nor the bridge. When I touch the strings again, I hear a light crack and the buzz is gone...

This means when I play hammer on from open strings there are buzzes and cracks sounding behind the notes, what's quite annoying.

I noticed the intensity of the buzz depends on the place I'm playing. It's much louder at home than in the bars I play, so I guess it may depends on the quality of the electric installation of the place... I don't know... but it's always present in one way or another.

Any clue on what's happening here (and how to solve it)?

Any tip will be appreciated!

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Yes, we know what it is. Hint: It's NOT a "grounding" problem, it's a shielding problem! The fact that the amount of hum varies with location shows it's picking up hum from electrical things around the bass (wiring etc.)

First off, obviously your bridge is properly grounded since the hum goes away when you touch the strings. However, you should know that you have active pickups and often with those the bridge is NOT grounded which as someone noted is a safety issue.

What needs to happen is you've got to shield (or have someone shield) the bass. This means lining the electronic cavities with copper foil. You get it from Stewmac and how to install it is available here and various places on the web. THEN after having done that so that the electronics is as totally enclosed in a conducting box as you can get (obviously tops of pickups can't be shielded) you then need to be sure that the output jack is securely grounded to the copper and that all other ground (pickups etc) are nice and solid.

If you do this, since you have "noiseless" pickups that bass should then be DEAD and I mean DEAD quiet!

Just because it says "Fender" on it doesn't mean that it's properly shielded. I just spend part of a day cramming copper foil into my MIM Deluxe. And yes it DID make it dead quiet!
 

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