Terrible hum in my Fender Tele... Any Solutions?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jimmy_the_LD
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jimmy_the_LD

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I've posted this on metafilter, and the only thing I can think to do is to come back to my favorite forum... so, I hereby end the lurking.

I received a new set of Telecaster Pickups for Christmas this year, and this weekend I 'operated' on my Tele to install the new pickups.

The reason I wanted them was that before I had these pickups and just had the stock pickups that came with, I got horrible noise out of my amp when not touching anything on the guitar. I touch the strings, the hum mostly goes away.

The pickups I got were the Vintage Strat Noiseless Pickups.

Now, I have another problem that I cannot figure out...
I get a hum NOW from the metal parts of the guitar and not the strings. WHen I removed the bridge pickup last night I noticed that there was a loop that hooked into the screw that held the pickup in place, and the new noiseless bridge pickup did NOT have this loop. I installed it as is, and this new problem with hum has developed. Do I need to go in and strip the lead down and insert that loop back together around the mounting screw? This isn't making sense to me. All of my solder connections are clean and unbroken, and the install itself is flawless.

Also, with the little silver lipstick pickup (the one farthest away from the bridge), there is a considerable amount of play in the "up/down" motion of the pickup. We're talking about the little silver one - it feels like I need to add yet another one of the little rubber bushings on each screw as to hold it down - it kind of tilts to the front, and it rattles a LOT. Do you think that another bushing, making a total of two bushings on each one of the two screws that holds the little pickup in place would help? I can't imagine it would hurt...

Thanks home recording folks... I'm at a loss here.
Jimmy
 
wow.

is it not welcome in here anymore to post if you haven't been posting in a while?
 
It's a grounding issue, at first when you made contact with the strings you rounded the circuit via your body (my primitive understanding of electronics). Are you sure the pick-ups are compatible with the potentiometers your Tele has? It sounds that something isn't matching up if the noiseless pick-ups are worse....you may have been better shielding your tele.
 
jimmy_the_LD said:
wow.

is it not welcome in here anymore to post if you haven't been posting in a while?
Click to expand...

Why do you ask? For my part, I did not respond to your original post because I had no info to offer. A bit sensitive, aren't we? ;^)
 
ggunn said:
Why do you ask? For my part, I did not respond to your original post because I had no info to offer. A bit sensitive, aren't we? ;^)
Click to expand...
All LDs are sensitive. :D
 
I'm not sure where your string ground goes to in this guitar, but that's the #1 problem I've seen over the years. Try using a jumper wire from the ground wire connection in the back of your guitar to the saddle or tail peice around the outside of the guitar. If your hum goes away that's your problem. To be sure make sure the hum is gone when you are not touching the guitar.

I haven't ever worked on fenders so I may be way off base and I also assume you have a tremelo sooooo:) good luck.


F.S.
 
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