Fender Squire is noisy, Ibanez RG isn't

Hi all,

I know this is not a guitar forum, but so many of you are having a recording studio so I think most of you know about the problem.
I have a Fender Squire (standard singlecoil pickups) and it is quite noisy when applying distortion, overdrive or plain high-gain.
I also have an Ibanez RG series (standard Humbucker->Singlecoil->Humbucker pickups) and this has no noise at all.

Does anyone of you know why? I initially speculated it was because the Fender uses Singlecoil pickups, but then if I activate the middle pickup (the singlecoil) on the Ibanez it still isn't noisy?!

Are the standard Fender pickups just that bad? If I want a similar sound for the Fender but without the noise, which pickups would I have to buy?

Sincerely,
Dennis P

You can also line the squire's electronics cavity with copper tape tied to ground. I've been able to minimize buzzes on some of my single coil instruments this way.

Also, if you're using a CRT monitor in close proximity to the squire, turn it off while you're playing.

I've got a squire '51. A $99us guitar from china, with a single coil, and a coil tap on a humbucker. When in single coil mode, the guitar is, of course, a bit noisier than when in humbucking mode, but not terrible. You might just have a noisy pickup in there.

Just buy some quality pickups and a wiring kit, and all your troubles will
go away.
Good pickups on a $10 import can sound as good as a $1,500 strat with good
pickups and wiring.

I agree with the copper tape suggestions. I've done that to a few guitars over the years and it can make a significant difference. You need some good soldering skills and skills with hand tools though to remove all the innerds. Yep's suggestions about turning off CRT's and the signal chain ring true too. When you're dealing with noise, you need to look at everything in the room.

Fender Squire huh? Chinese? My guess is the pickups in those guitars are probably cheap to begin with. Maybe the winding or coils or wire is substandard. Pots. Who knows. You could try a new set of pickups. Dimarzio, Seymore Duncan or even better Fender pickups might help. The Lace Sensors are known to be quiet. Usually, by the time you've done all this stuff though, you've paid for the price of a new guitar

something you can also do is paint where the wires run into the jack, with special paint. Also get rid of light dimmers and try to orient you guitar in different directions.

i have to say though that squier is..... LOL...you already know

X

ORIGINAL: fessorman

Yo Coldsteal - are you X'ing away my noise there?

Still searching for the problem though - I fear that the neighbour has some TV or something that emits radio waves beyond accepted levels - the walls here are mostly plaster walls with wood and rockwool between them so radiowaves have no problems visiting my gear from next door...

F B: What is that "special paint" you are talking about - something with iron in it like you can use to paint onto wood to make the wood susceptible to (fridge) magnets?

Well,
Off to search on...
Dennis P

Cables are important to, cheap chords will pick up electronic bleedover

Single pickups are noisy, strat pickups especialy, but there are noiseless
ones and dual coil strat pickups that are Alot quieter.

I have a couple of Fender Hot Noiseless Pickups laying around, a bridge and
Neck pickup and shielded pickgaurd if you have a strat style Squire.
They are almost completly noisefree.
But i see you are all the way in Denmark, not sure if the shiping would
even make it worth it though.

Yeah, mail from the US is a pain - I'll look around for some second hand ones (makes it cheaper to do trial and error searching )

Thanx,
Dennis P

ORIGINAL: fessorman

Yeah, mail from the US is a pain - I'll look around for some second hand ones (makes it cheaper to do trial and error searching )

Thanx,
Dennis P

If you were local i would have just sent them to you, but dont want to deal with
customs, friggen Homeland Security would probably think they
were some kind of bomb hahah.

Good luck hope you can find some.

ORIGINAL: yep ~ find a simple way to zap the noise at the source.

Yep brings up a real good point. The pickups aren't creating noise they are failing to reject it.

While better pickups and more shielding will certainly help... you would be concentrating on the symptoms instead of the problem.

ORIGINAL: coldsteal2
then i accidently knocked the power unit off the shelf and the hum went away.

That's all you guitarists need to know, right there. Just start knocking things off of desks and shelves until the problem disappears.

In your guitar, everything should be grounded. There is probably a common point, like on the back of one of the potentiometers (knobs) that has a bunch of wires soldered to it, likely bare wires. Make sure that everything, potentiometers, switches, 1/4" jack has a common wire going to that place either directly or indirectly. And also make sure that none of those bare wires are touching anything else besides that place where they are soldered to. If they are, you might wrap all the bare wires with electrical tape or heat-shrink or something to keep them isolated.

It's very important that everything that needs to be grounded is grounded, and nothing that isn't supposed to be grounded is grounded. I know in my old Ibanez RG I had noise issues every now and then, and it was just a ground wire out of place. I taped all the ground wires up, and problem solved. With a cheap guitar, with cheap components, sometimes the short is inside the components, and not in the wiring. But usually not.

And in case maybe it isn't the guitar at all that is causing the problem. I would unplug everything in the house that you can except what it takes to record your guitar, and see if the hum goes away. It may be a refridgerator or something like that causing the hum. And like someone else said, if that doesn't do it, get an extension cord and try plugging your DAW and guitar amp or whatever you have into a different receptacle in a different room, as far away as possible so you can be pretty sure it isn't on the same circuit. Maybe that receptacle or another receptacle on that circuit isn't grounded well. Although it would be better to move your rig into another room when trying this, because sometimes extension cords can introduce noise. That would be a lot of trouble, so I would try unplugging everything non-essential first. If it is your electrical system, maybe a power-conditioner would help. They are not cheap, but they are cheaper than rewiring your house.

Sometimes it depends on where you're playing. The single coils on my Les Paul don't typically give me any problem, but sitting in with a band at a bar near here, it must have been the house wiring or something: my Paul hummed like crazy all through the gig. Doesn't happen elsewhere.
Mark

It's good that that tape works for something, because snails ain't even afraid of it. I originally put copper tape wrapped tubes around my basil plants, because I wanted to be considerate of other life forms and whatnot. But after coming out and seeing that the snails had eaten all my basil and then removed the tape and shaped it into a sculpture of a middle finger, now I just go outside once in a while and fire a few shotgun blasts into the bushes near the basil plants and then pee on their dead bodies.

ORIGINAL: droddey
But after coming out and seeing that the snails had eaten all my basil and then removed the tape and shaped it into a sculpture of a middle finger, now I just go outside once in a while and fire a few shotgun blasts into the bushes near the basil plants and then pee on their dead bodies.

Now I see that Trigger Finger in your sig isn't made by m-audio!