EMG 81/85 solderless - Noisy

M

metallixro

New member
Heya people,

I installed EMG 81/85 (85 bridge) in my Dean Dime Stealth and there is too much noise coming out of them (considering they are suposed to be quite free of it) unless I touch the cable jack/ guitar output plate and then it becomes completely hum free. Touching strings or other hardware does not fix it.. I got the pickups in a trade with the passives that came with the guitar and I have bought an EMG wiring kit and EMG B289V 3 pos toggle switch and wired everything acording to the diagram below.
I have tried every wire combination possible in order to get rid of the hum, including only one pickup, and nothing seems to work.
I need help, I don't understand whats wrong and I'm completely stumped.. I have another guitar with the same pickups and those are noise free but that guitar does not have solderless ones.
There are no lose connectors and the battery is wrapped in electrical tape.

What could be the problem ? bad 3pos switch, bad cable coming out the switch, something wrong with the output jack ?
Asking here experienced techies before I waste more money on another wiring kit/ switch.

There are no guitar techs around where I live and would have to ship the guitar with it's huge case to get it checked, the cost would be too high.

CHEERS!
 

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Sounds like a grounding problem. If you touch the output jack and the noise stops, but when you touch the strings, it does not... that leads me to suspect you don't have a string ground.

That said, EMGs are supposed to be noise-free even when you're not touching the strings (or so I thought).
 
If it were a bad wire, you'd have problems with no sound or weak sound coming out of the EMGs on some positions or with a particular wiring scheme. The fact that changing the wiring to be only a single EMG still brings hum means you can eliminate the wires themselves.

I would try removing all non-essential components including pots and switches and wiring just the battery, the main board, a bridge pickup, and then trying it?
 
Check if your jack had been wired properly I had the same problem.
Check if the problem occurs with both pickups while switching or with just one of them.
 
I bought a set of NOS EMGs on eBay and had this problem. EMG's tech support helped me out, even though I went through eBay. Turned out to be fake EMGs and EMG even warrantied them for me. Wow.
 
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