Questions about single coil noise

[ggunn]

Won't this help prevent (or perhaps just minimize) your getting shocked from polarity discrepancies between amps, etc., from which your amp's fuse will not? Of course, only when holding your strings and touching the other mic, guitar, whatever. I've never tried it, but it sounded like a reasonable idea to me. I just fixed my amp's ground instead.

In the first place, your amp's fuse has nothing to do with protecting you from getting shocked. It's for shutting down the amp when something goes wrong with the amp itself, and is there to stop the amp from doing more damage to itself. (Maybe I misread what you posted?)

In the second place, I never really understood the logic. The cap values I have seen recommended for this practice are so low that they are an open circuit for everything but very high frequencies. What does that do?

 

[Light]

Won't this help prevent (or perhaps just minimize) your getting shocked from polarity discrepancies between amps, etc., from which your amp's fuse will not? Of course, only when holding your strings and touching the other mic, guitar, whatever. I've never tried it, but it sounded like a reasonable idea to me. I just fixed my amp's ground instead.

No. It is supposedly there to protect you from something going wrong in the amp, and there is nothing that could go wrong in the amp which wouldn't blow the fuse while putting voltage through your guitar.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[Light]

In the first place, your amp's fuse has nothing to do with protecting you from getting shocked. It's for shutting down the amp when something goes wrong with the amp itself, and is there to stop the amp from doing more damage to itself. (Maybe I misread what you posted?)

While that is true, the fuse DOES protect you from something like a wire coming loose and touching the chassis or a death cap shorting to the chassis. So, while it isn't there to protect you as such, it does protect you from some things.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[Light]

will super glue and some kind of even spreader work just as well as the spray adhesive? I question my coordination with such sticky things, I may end up aluminium foiling my entire guitar just to give it a consistent look.

You just spray the adhesive on the foil, well away from the guitar, and you'll be fine.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[stevestrats]

The biggest problem with the aluminium foil and spray adhesive is you end up with as much foil stuck to your fingers as there is in the cavity! I found self adhesive aluminium tape which made the job a hell of a lot easier and cleaner. Something else that may help is wiring a 1:1 audio transformer between the volume pot and output jack. It filters a lot of the noise out and is small enough to fit in the output jack cavity. I was going to include a link to a manafacturer but their website is down (has been for a while?), this is a UK high street electronics supplier that stocks them to let you see what you're after: http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=46791

My main Strat is a clone of Blackmore's Sunburst from the mid '70s with SD SSL-4s bridge & neck, middle is a dummy as per the original (Blackmore only used the neck & bridge). I play through a BSM HS-C treble booster and Boss OD-3 overdrive but with an impedance balancer between the guitar and HS-C and a noise filter before the amp, it's an unplayable set-up without the impedance balancer and filter. If I'm just playing the Strat into the amp the audio tranny in the output jack cavity copes with any noise the coils are picking up.

Regarding Blackmore, back in the Rainbow days they had horrendous noise problems caused by the rainbow over the stage. His Strats were shielded with conductive shielding paint, sometimes known as "radar paint" and one coil was reverse wound/reverse polarity to help eliminate the noise.