Maybe I missed it but have you completely shielded your electronics. The cavities with either shielding paint or copper tape?
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Wow, lots of great ideas through this entire thread! This is the first time I'm actually posting something here, usually just a spectator but I felt inclined to put my 2 cents in. Given the fact that you seemingly have tried almost everything under the sun, I'd go back to the basics. I zoomed in on your cavity picture, if this were my bass I would start looking at the quality of your solder joints. I'm not at all trying to be critical but a poorly soldered joint can cause a myriad of problems. Specifically here, the output jack terminals look kinda sloppy, I would start by redoing those. If that doesn't solve it, physically inspect every single solder joint, if it looks questionable (look to Google for pics of poor versus good solder joints as a reference), redo it. I've also run into a case where the bridge ground wire was not actually touching the underside of the bridge, since then I've implemented soldering the ground wire to copper shielding on the underside of the bridge. When you pierce it with the mounting screws it gives you 3 or 5 good points for continuity. Hang in there bro, I kmow there is nothing more frustrating than chasing a wiring problem.
Glad it's sorted. One other thing- you used shielded wire for the pickup leads- did you ground the shielding? If not, find the bare wire that's sort of wrapped up in the foil and ground it, at the cavity end and NOT at the pickup end. Ungrounded shielded wire can actually increase noise vs plain wire.
Late to the party here, but years ago I silenced the single coil pups on my Marcus Miller. I wrote up how I did it, and posted the file here (I think). The success came primarily from shielding the pups and the cavity (crappy job from the factory). But I also properly star-grounded the signal circuit at the jack as a precaution. I used to work on corporate jet avionics and I could get those audio systems dead quiet by isolating the audio low side from power ground (i.e., the airframe), and connecting it to ground at only one place so that aircraft power could not flow through the audio circuit. Not usually an issue on a bass where there should be no electric current flowing through the ground, but it's just the right way to do it, and not hard to do.
if you describe the SOUND problem it would be easier to resolve, if its in the high frecuencies, midle or low. then i could probbably tell you what's the problem you're having.
Darn, my normal phono technician is out of town this week.
Do you have a ground wire running from your strings (usually connecting to the bridge)?
DiabolusInMusic
Functionless Art is Merely Tolerated Vandalism
For those interested, this guide is a great read and highly recommended. Your guide was what I used when I first started shielding my basses. I don't think I found it here, however. I am pretty sure I found it on a site for guitar.
Thanks for sharing it.
I dont see your "hot" connections. I think your wiring diagram shows you are using the ground for your hot connections. One thing learned in bass building is do not ground various components to the shield. The grounds from you pickups should be running to pots/switches that control them. Again, im not seeing any hot connections which would be the ones seperated from ground, what im seeing is grounds going out as the hot if your jack is correct in the diagram. One thing i learned is about the ”star ground" from the wonderful book by baseplayer magazine book, basses of the world. Wire your bass with the signal ground running to your pots switches and pickups. Then select a place close to the out put jack and run all your grounds to a single point. Grounding your pickups to the shield makes the shield an antenna. Run all your grounds with a wire to the single star ground wich should connext to the shielding foil. Then run a wire from the star ground out to the jack. If your using the three terminal stock jack it will be a tip ring sleeve jack, and one of those will have a grounded connection. You can solder the ring and sleeve lug togetehr but youll have to get into it and correct that junk later so id throw it out. Use only quality jacks like swithcraft. Good quality componets are your first line of defense against being a technition or a musician! Loool again i think youre running hot side through the ground. If you use the star ground method you can build a completely silent guitar. Also bear in mind your tone is in your fingers!!!!!! (!!!!!) And you can easily do away with single coil switching and other fancy wiring tricks. My main player bass is built of aluminum brass and graphite and has two humbuckers wired in parallel direct to the jack w/o pots switches or other. Fancy circuitry can suck tone. Use shielded wire anywhere and everywhere you can. Stewart McDonald now makes original '50s style shielded guitar wire where the inside conductor is insulated from the shield with cloth, so its very hard to solder the hot to ground. Buy sum and use it everywhere. Also if your component access plate doesnt have foil on it that can pickup sources of hum although mine doesnt because im well shielded using the shielded wire. In the wood bass i built, i made 1/16 aluminum bass plates so i could mount the pickups with machine screws instead of those skeevely little wood screws and then grounded those plates also. Just one more thing (cough lol) check your plugs on your cords and clean them and try the axe through another amp sometimes after all your wrestling it will be something outside the guitar! If you buy a multi meter get a good one. Dont shag about. I bought a fluke and it even measure capacitance it can also be used to find the correct place to make a pickup rout. Theyre amazing and 80$ is worth it!!!!!!
This is awesome, thanks so much for sharing. I feel like this thread should be stickied since you posted this here
Post #42 shows what I did with the bare wire, per respective manufacturers instructions. Are you suggesting that I do something differently?
No criticism taken! They really aren't the best. I'll redo the output jack terminals once I get the upgraded Switchcraft jack I have on order.
Yeah, I soldered more wire to the bridge ground to make sure there's contact, though I didn't use copper tape. If noise persists I'll redo it. Thanks for your support! It's pernicious!
My jass bass has push pull tone selector as well as volume don't if that help you
I wired switches per diagrams provided by Bartolini and Lundgren. There's the bare wire (isn't that the ground?) and then the hot red wire for the Bartolini and the hot black for the Lundgren. Again, just following the diagrams provided (see post #42). If you would wire them differently could you provide a diagram?
Sorry, I'm confused. How is this different from what I do in post #42?
