EMG Noise

Bardagh said:
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.
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Yeah. If just touching volume pot doesnt make it go away, not ground. I know when i sit facing my computer, my pickup catches noise. I just roll back volume for that. Emg may be more sensitive to it.
 
Bardagh said:
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.
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no they didn't.
 
Bardagh said:
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.
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They are also supposedly made in China Now & they weren't back in the 90's.
 
Banter aside, if I had to have ONE kind of pickup it wouldn't be EMG's, but they do a certain sound nothing else does and sometimes, for some things, I want that. However this noise being induced may prohibit that.

I just spent some more of my time troubleshooting this.

I bypassed the solderless circuitry and hooked everything up using just the 81 to a regular 25k volume pot using clips and the noise was the same or worse. I then hooked it and the battery directly to the output jack and it was the same. The only difference was that with these methods the ground was passing into the jack plate as well, and everything got very quiet when I touched it.

This made we wonder if something might be wrong with the jack, so I put all the solderless shit back together and tested continuity between an open ground connection pin on the volume pot PCB and the sleeve of the other end of the cable and I got continuity. So, the ground connection is there but for whatever reason the buzz is just not making it out of the signal like it does in a normal setup where you are providing a path to ground when you touch the strings.
 
CrazyNutz said:
If you like sterile sounding, lack of complexity compressed tone, I guess they're great :ROFLMAO:

I used EMG's for 10+ years, before I discovered how bad they are.
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They have their place but aren't for everyone. I prefer MCP but have not had great communication experiences with Wade.
 
So here is a question:

What does it mean that if I remove the sleeve ground connection so that the only ground is ME, that I can get all the noise to go away completely (by touching the output jack plate) but having the sleeve ground connected as it should only reduces the noise about 70%?

Obviously there is a ground connection, as the noise IS reduced and I have tested for continuity. Is it as simple as the human body is just a much bigger and better path to ground?
 
I have an old solder set of 85/sa/sa in a parts o caster Charvel. I have the same symptoms. I was in contact with EMG a few years back when I built the guitar and they say these symptoms should not be. I was slowly troubleshooting with EMG via email, but life got in the way and the guitar is packed away now.

You should start an online dialog with EMG. I found them helpful, if not able to diagnose the problem. I would be curious how you fare.
 
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So I went ahead and shielded the cavities and that has taken the noise down almost completely. I think that may mean the interference was getting into the signal after the pickups - in the pots, pcbs and wires.

This cavities looked like they had shielding paint but upon testing it for continuity it had zilch. Completely non-conductive. Copper tape did the trick as usual.
 
Bardagh said:
So I went ahead and shielded the cavities and that has taken the noise down almost completely. I think that may mean the interference was getting into the signal after the pickups - in the pots, pcbs and wires.

This cavities looked like they had shielding paint but upon testing it for continuity it had zilch. Completely non-conductive. Copper tape did the trick as usual.
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Interesting.
 
83stratman said:
Interesting.
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Yeah, I had read already lots of stuff about this from various posts across the internet over the years. EMG’s stance on shielding is it isn’t necessary and shouldn’t make a difference, although you can also introduce other grounding problems (and a few threads I found were people who had those problems due to old shielding in a guitar the added the EMG’s to).

You just want to make sure that if you’re using the EMG’s normal wiring scheme, especially with the newer solderless components, that any shielding you add is all connected to the same ground. It shouldn’t be able to find ground through you when touching anything on the outside of the guitar. That is easy to do in most cases. In my case I’m dealing with a Strat so while it requires a lot of copper tape its easy to keep it all on the same ground.
 
Bardagh said:
Yeah, I had read already lots of stuff about this from various posts across the internet over the years. EMG’s stance on shielding is it isn’t necessary and shouldn’t make a difference, although you can also introduce other grounding problems (and a few threads I found were people who had those problems due to old shielding in a guitar the added the EMG’s to).

You just want to make sure that if you’re using the EMG’s normal wiring scheme, especially with the newer solderless components, that any shielding you add is all connected to the same ground. It shouldn’t be able to find ground through you when touching anything on the outside of the guitar. That is easy to do in most cases. In my case I’m dealing with a Strat so while it requires a lot of copper tape its easy to keep it all on the same ground.
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I’m having the same problem with my jazzmaster…. EMG jmaster pre wired pick guard… I’ve shielded the cavity and the pick guard, but do I need to solder a ground from the pots to the shielding ?
 
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