Buzzing only in 1-3-5?

Installed a loaded Jimmy Vaughan pickguard in a Strat body last night. Think I did it right. But the thing buzzes in 1-3-5 - perfect in 2-4.

I have two other Strats that work fine on same amp cable and outlet.

What to look for?

if your good in 2-4 and buzzy in 1-3-5, that's just single coil hum. you'll need to go to humbuckers or noiseless replacements to really get rid of it, if it is an issue.

i used my strat with single coils the other night at a gig and it was fine, even when i turned the gain up a bit on the distortion. same with my tele.

most people here would say that they don't have a problem with a little bit of buzz. i have to say lately i agree.

gene

I prefer as little noise as possible. The reason 2 and 4 are silent (or close enough!) is that most "modern" 5-way strats are setup with a reverse wound middle pickup. This allows positions 2 and 4 to be hum-cancelling.

Old stratocasters didn't even have that, they just had 3 pickup selections, all noisy as heck. You can either live with the noise or trade a little bit of tone for noisieless pickups.

if your good in 2-4 and buzzy in 1-3-5, that's just single coil hum. you'll need to go to humbuckers or noiseless replacements to really get rid of it, if it is an issue.

i used my strat with single coils the other night at a gig and it was fine, even when i turned the gain up a bit on the distortion. same with my tele.

most people here would say that they don't have a problem with a little bit of buzz. i have to say lately i agree.

gene
but, he says he has other Stratocasters, and presumably Telecasters, and doesn't have the same problem, so my guess is that it's not just normal single-coil hum. it could be a grounding issue, or you might need to better sheild the guitar, or both.

i have played the single coils live with some hum but it wasn't a big deal. it is not that it 'wasn't there', just that it really didn't bother me. I was using some gain, but not tons. I wasn't using a tripleX peavey on 10 with an mxr distortion+. I was using a tube screamer into a tube amp.

i have however played in a place with neon lights, and the 60hz noise off those were crippling to the other guitar player at the time. it was particularly noisy

where i practice every week, the guy has a bad ground in his house, and even my les paul with HBs has crappy electrical hum.

so if the power is crappy, the power is crappy. but if you got decent AC, and a well shielded guitar and cable, you might be able to live with it.

g.

Is the body shielded??? Your others probably are.

Shielding the pickguard and the guitar cavity is important. Also check your ground connection and make sure the soldering is good, bad solder joints can make for hum sound.

I suspect poor soldering as the work of installing the loaded JV pickguard was done by a complete hack - me.

The body is a new Highway 1 which I believe has shielding paint - with a grounding screw. I will recheck and re-solder.

I am just curious as to why if it is my bad work that positions 2 and 4 are still quiet as a mouse - I would have thought that all positions would have been bad - but then again I AM a total hack so what do I know.

I suspect poor soldering as the work of installing the loaded JV pickguard was done by a complete hack - me.

The body is a new Highway 1 which I believe has shielding paint - with a grounding screw. I will recheck and re-solder.

I am just curious as to why if it is my bad work that positions 2 and 4 are still quiet as a mouse - I would have thought that all positions would have been bad - but then again I AM a total hack so what do I know.

Well keep practicing Sidney you'll get it. I took me a little bit, but of course I had Terry Down's Soldering video as visual and Audio and me doing along with video.

Is the cavities shielded, the pickguard shielded? Have you checked that everything is grounded that is supposed to be grounded?

Having good grounding never hurts. I even like to shield the cavities and star ground everything... but that's just me. Oh, yeah, and my guitars are pretty dang quiet, too!

Bob