I just got a new Schecter Stiletto Stealth 4 and love it so far. The weight, balance, and neck are all pretty much perfect for me.
I do have a couple issues though. When I first got it, there was some electrical hum which would go away if I touched the strings or the control knobs. If I touched the screws for the neck pickup, the hum would get worse. To get the protective plastic off the pickguard, I totally unscrewed it, took the plastic off, and just had a look in the control cavity to see if anything looked off. Nothing did, but when I put the guard back on, the hum was pretty much gone. Except for the bridge pickup which is extremely noisy. The neck pickup is fine, which for now works great because I like the tone from the neck pup more.
I've also noticed that the pups are picking up a ton of noise from the body of the guitar. I am only practising in headphones for now and if I lightly tap the body of the bass I can hear that amplified in the headphones. Even the creaking of my strap gets picked up.
Now I've heard that the electronics in Schecters can be pretty crap which seems to be the case here. I'm assuming that the hum problems stem from a grounding issue somewhere. Is the pickups amplifying body noise typical of active pickups or is it just the sub-par electronics? I had an Ibanez SR505 years ago and don't remember issues like this.
I am considering swapping over to a fully passive setup as I do love the sound of my P-bass, but my shoulder just can't take the weight anymore. So that would probably be one solution, but I'm just wondering if there's anything I can do in the meantime to deal with the hum and extraneous noise.
I do have a couple issues though. When I first got it, there was some electrical hum which would go away if I touched the strings or the control knobs. If I touched the screws for the neck pickup, the hum would get worse. To get the protective plastic off the pickguard, I totally unscrewed it, took the plastic off, and just had a look in the control cavity to see if anything looked off. Nothing did, but when I put the guard back on, the hum was pretty much gone. Except for the bridge pickup which is extremely noisy. The neck pickup is fine, which for now works great because I like the tone from the neck pup more.
I've also noticed that the pups are picking up a ton of noise from the body of the guitar. I am only practising in headphones for now and if I lightly tap the body of the bass I can hear that amplified in the headphones. Even the creaking of my strap gets picked up.
Now I've heard that the electronics in Schecters can be pretty crap which seems to be the case here. I'm assuming that the hum problems stem from a grounding issue somewhere. Is the pickups amplifying body noise typical of active pickups or is it just the sub-par electronics? I had an Ibanez SR505 years ago and don't remember issues like this.
I am considering swapping over to a fully passive setup as I do love the sound of my P-bass, but my shoulder just can't take the weight anymore. So that would probably be one solution, but I'm just wondering if there's anything I can do in the meantime to deal with the hum and extraneous noise.
