bad feed back from bridge...help?

[lowbrow]

I have a couple Peavey Reactors, which are tele copies. I have a terrible time with the bridge pups being microphonic and feeding back horribly in any situation with live volume levels. Like...uncontrollably...so bad I can only play the neck pup. BTW...I play high gain/distorted tones...not quite metal...more like Nirvana/Weezer/Ramones type sounds.

Different pickups (Fender, DiMarzio, etc) don't cure it. Sometimes it gets better, but doesn't go away. My bridge already has two screws at the front edge. I've substituted surgical tubing for the springs.

My last two options seem to be:

1) stuffing foam rubber under the pup (count me skeptical it'll solve it)
2) mounting the pup to the body instead of the bridge plate (ala the new GE Smith tele)

Any other suggestions?

[boris bubbanov]

Mark Davis' sage advice is to use a known flat object covered in sandpaper to smooth the underside bottom of your bridge plate dead flat. The corollary is if any part of that Peavey body is sticking up and preventing the plate from seating well, that would have to be smoothed as well.

I'd do this before I tried anything else.

If that helps but is not enough alone, I'd switch to a #6 x 1 inch stainless bevel head mount screw on that bridge plate. Partially fill any mount hole that is at all stripped out.

Good luck,


Bubbanov

[skeksis]

also... look at the rest of the volume/tone circuit. boris is probably right, but I had an issue with a guitar where a mod to the volume/tone circuit caused a lot of painful highs to ring out, almost sounding microphonic/feedback-like. returning to a stock setup solved my problem... good luck.

[lowbrow]

I'll try these mods, thanks. I have more than one of these and I think I just have to keep experimenting on one of them till I get it solved.
Thanks!

BTW..here's a shot of one of them..