EMG Noise

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Bardagh

Bardagh

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I haven't had EMG pickups in a while but recently put together a partscaster using the 81/SA/SA combo. Now, the last time I had EMG's I also found that they were noisier than I expected them to be, but these current ones are even more so. When I say they are noisy I am talking about interference, not that the pickups themselves are creating the noise. This is the kind of buzz/hum that changes with your orientation. However, EMG's are supposed to be "internally shielded" so they should be better at rejecting this noise than the average humbucker, not worse. The only guitar that comes close to picking up noise this much in my arsenal is my Explorer with its current BKP Nailbomb.

There are a couple things I'm wondering - could the noise be picked up more by the components in the solderless wiring than the pickups themselves? If so, what can be done aside from what I've already got going on, which is the cavities painted with shielding paint and foil tape under the pickguard? Is foil tape more effective than shielding paint?

My other observation is that the noise is worse at some times than others, but when I have noticed it being worse, there aren't any appliances or anything like that running or any obvious source of the interference.
 
So I sacrificed a new set of strings to pull this all back apart and try and troubleshoot it. All connections checked and re-checked, everything tested both in the guitar and out of the guitar.

The noise is all coming from the output wires from the jack that run to the volume pot. Moving it around at all, even indirectly, changes the degree of noise. Touching the volume pot when that wire is connected increases the noise. Fiddling with any other components or wires anywhere has zero effect. When the guitar is strung up and everything, touching the jack or anything like that has zero effect (which I think is how it should be).

The noise is there on all three pickups, it’s there no matter what cable I use, it’s there with each fresh new battery, you get the picture. The quietest I can get the noise to be it is still way too loud, worse than the hum from my Telecaster’s single coils.

The way EMGs work, to my understanding, is the pickups themselves are internally shielded and the whole thing is grounded through the instrument cable. The stereo jack is not exactly complicated. The ground connection there seems solid and fiddling with it has no effect.

I know they say not to have a ground connected to your bridge (and thereby to yourself) with EMG’s and that doing so can actually cause more noise but I know for instance that the Fishmans I have in another guitar do use a ground to bridge and they’re nice and quiet.

Should I try and add that ground wire to bridge? Try and shield the cavities with conductive tape?
 
headlessdeadguy said:
Ground issue
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Well I just spent a bunch of time rigging things up with alligator clips and I don’t think it’s a grounding issue. I think it’s interference. The pickups may be internally shielded but I don’t think that matters if the interference is getting in through the other components.

I have a couple other guitars that are a little noisy and it seems like the same noise, just with the EMGs its much louder, so with gain it is intruding on the actual guitar sound. Even with a noise gate the interference is loud enough that you hear it as notes trail off.
 
You say you have the noise with other guitars? Try new cable. I had an issue that took me forever to find. Planet wave cable. Bought all mogami, never looked back
 
Smashedguitarist said:
You say you have the noise with other guitars? Try new cable. I had an issue that took me forever to find. Planet wave cable. Bought all mogami, never looked back
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It’s not the cable, I’ve tried others (as well as going straight to amps instead of through my pedalboard) and these are Mogami as well.

There is probably some amount of EMI from my computer and studio monitors that are close by and that’s just kind of unavoidable, but it isn’t a problem with the other guitars as it is very low level noise and using a noise gate deals with it without really changing tone at all. Only with some guitars and pedal combinations (like the Explorer w/a Nailbomb in the bridge going into the Dirty Tree) does that noise ever require a tweak to the noise gate.

The thing with the EMG’s is I’m using the solderless electronics. Wired up as normal the noise doesn’t change when touching anything except the ouput wires that run from the volume pot to the jack, or the circuit board of that pot, or the retention clip of the jack that connects to the cables ground. Touching the metal knob shaft of the pot doesn’t do anything for instance. That to me seems like the ground is connected as it should be, it just is open to being interfered with between the volume pot to the jack because there’s nothing shielding those wires or bare metal parts of the path.
 
Yep. i've never had an noise issues from any EMG's. I Will say that the older ones sounded better.
 
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This is an 81/SA/SA set from like 2005 so they have the old logo but hooked up with a brand new solderless kit from EMG. Soundwise they are great. I know EMG says the only thing different these days is the logo, and maybe this guitar just really likes EMGs, but this sounds way better than the last couple new guitars I had that came with EMGs in the last ten years.
 
Bardagh said:
This is an 81/SA/SA set from like 2005 so they have the old logo but hooked up with a brand new solderless kit from EMG. Soundwise they are great. I know EMG says the only thing different these days is the logo, and maybe this guitar just really likes EMGs, but this sounds way better than the last couple new guitars I had that came with EMGs in the last ten years.
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I'm talking about EMG's before they changed to Solderless. From the 90's. I have EMG's in almost all my guitars & the newer ones sound different. I ACTUALLY Seek out NOS EMG's now.
 
The One said:
I'm talking about EMG's before they changed to Solderless. From the 90's. I have EMG's in almost all my guitars & the newer ones sound different. I ACTUALLY Seek out NOS EMG's now.
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Did they originally not have the push connectors on the pickups themselves? The first ones I ever bought back in the 90’s still did. Other than that part there’s nothing stopping anyone from soldering them in. I might try it and see if its more resistant to the noise since I have some old 25k pots and stuff from an older emg install.
 
Do you have another EMG solderless volume pot to try?

I went through this recently with an SA set in a strat. I found the SA singles to be much noisier than my guitars with EMG humbuckers (I’ve got an 81 in one guitar and a 57/66 set in another.

My SAs also exhibited ‘positional‘ noise that I could make better or worse depending on where I was standing or how I held my guitar. For example, guitar Perpendicular to the floor in playing position was much noisier than the guitar lying flat across my lap.

I also traced the noise to the volume pot. Touching the wire from the Jack to volume pot made it worse. Swapped volume pots with a spare EMG solderless off my parts shelf and the condition improved noticeably - but the SAs were always more sensitive than the humbuckers to this sort of RF / interference type of noise. Whenever the AC in my house cycled on, the noise got worse - quieter when the AC cycled off. Weird.
 
PDC said:
Do you have another EMG solderless volume pot to try?

I went through this recently with an SA set in a strat. I found the SA singles to be much noisier than my guitars with EMG humbuckers (I’ve got an 81 in one guitar and a 57/66 set in another.

My SAs also exhibited ‘positional‘ noise that I could make better or worse depending on where I was standing or how I held my guitar. For example, guitar Perpendicular to the floor in playing position was much noisier than the guitar lying flat across my lap.

I also traced the noise to the volume pot. Touching the wire from the Jack to volume pot made it worse. Swapped volume pots with a spare EMG solderless off my parts shelf and the condition improved noticeably - but the SAs were always more sensitive than the humbuckers to this sort of RF / interference type of noise. Whenever the AC in my house cycled on, the noise got worse - quieter when the AC cycled off. Weird.
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Interesting, that does sound similar although the 81 is actually worse than the SA’s in my case. I don’t have another solderless volume pot, but I do have some regular 25k pots. I wonder if I could rig it up with alligator clips to test…
 
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It might be worth a try to see if something is going on in that volume pot. I honestly don’t know if EMG solderless V pots are 500 or 250 - but for purposes of an elimination test, that shouldn’t matter.

I was able to dramatically reduce the noise my SAs made by plugging an amp into a different room in my house. My gear room is in the basement and shares the same secondary breaker box as our HVAC. Just for sh*ts and giggles, I hauled my 2x12 and a 50 watt head upstairs to the living room (which feeds off the primary breaker box) and the noise that cycled on and off with our AC system was gone. Strange thing is, all my passive pickup guitars were literally unaffected by this and were quiet in any room of the house with the AC running or not.
 
PDC said:
It might be worth a try to see if something is going on in that volume pot. I honestly don’t know if EMG solderless V pots are 500 or 250 - but for purposes of an elimination test, that shouldn’t matter.

I was able to dramatically reduce the noise my SAs made by plugging an amp into a different room in my house. My gear room is in the basement and shares the same secondary breaker box as our HVAC. Just for sh*ts and giggles, I hauled my 2x12 and a 50 watt head upstairs to the living room (which feeds off the primary breaker box) and the noise that cycled on and off with our AC system was gone. Strange thing is, all my passive pickup guitars were literally unaffected by this and were quiet in any room of the house with the AC running or not.
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EMG’s actually use 25k volume pots. I’ve used EMG’s a few times back before they came out with the solderless system so I still have some of the old components somewhere.

I have a small two room studio built out in my basement and everything in the basement is on this secondary breaker box except for the HVAC. I have two circuits that only my stuff is in but there is a small fridge and a wine fridge on the other side of one of my walls, and the furnaces and AC units aren’t too far away, even though there is concrete between us.

There’s no telling sometimes what the source of the noise is. I’ve heard of people having problems emanating all the way from the electric company’s big transformers outside as sometimes they aren’t shielded properly. But just like you said, I don’t really have a problem with my passive guitars or even the one I have with Fishmans.
 
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EMG's naturally sound like noise, pull them out, and put some real pickups in (y)
 
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