Bass hissing

[asmmurray]

My bass is having issues with hissing at the moment. It is a pretty crap fender precision bass copy and when I turn the tone knob, I get lots of high frequency noise. However when I put my hands on the strings, the hiss abruptly stops.
Any ideas anyone???

Thanks

 

[bassbenj]

My bass is having issues with hissing at the moment. It is a pretty crap fender precision bass copy and when I turn the tone knob, I get lots of high frequency noise. However when I put my hands on the strings, the hiss abruptly stops.
Any ideas anyone???

Thanks

High frequency noise...not "hiss"! Hiss is a sound like steam or air escaping. The big hint here is that the noise goes away when you touch ground (strings...bridge is grounded). That means that the bass needs a shield job. Personally I prefer copper foil to do that though shield paint can be made to work too.

It's simple, inexpensive, and pretty easy to do with lots of instructions on line to get you going. The basic idea is that you want to enclose as much as possible all the controls, wiring and pickups in a conductive copper enclosure that is connected to "ground" (body of jack).

 

[asmmurray]

Thanks!!