Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Tech => Topic started by: Ochaye on August 07, 2010, 04:11:50 PM
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i am at my wits end trying to locate a rattle from my guitar( les paul),only on certain notes does it rattle quite loudly......
i have narrowed my search down to either pick ups or trussrod,everything else i have checked and secured
is it at all posible for the wax in the potted pick ups to rattle?
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I'm not Tim, but I'd be surprised if it's the pickups....
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No. If there was a problem with teh potting the pickups would be microphonic, not rattling.
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I've heard of truss rods rattling before, not pups.
Definitely not fret buzz?
Tim Mark.
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nah,its certain frequencies that sets it off
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Maybe your just hitting the natural resonant frequency of your guitars body. I've noticed something similar with my guitars.
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it may seem odd but check all the bits on your jack socket are tight and secure - had a similar problem a few years back and that what I traced it down to..
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it does happen. A frequency can kick off any number of sympathetic vibrations within a guitar]
damn hard to pin down though
first time i saw this problem was back in the mid 90's... i had my first proper guitar and it always buzzed on certain chords. Sent it off for a setup as i was told i should, came back playing a little better but buzzing twice as much.
my solution at the time was blue tack. and by the time the whole guitar was covered in blue tack i knew it was the pickup doing the sympathetic vibration... but i would be surprised to get that from BKP, doesnt mean it cant happen though. My guitar at the time had loose covers, thats what caused the problem.... but covers are metal so the sympathetic vibrations were amplified in a bad way... THis cannot happen with wax so its not the wax at fault
if the wax potting was a problem you would only hear it amplified through other metal parts that were vibrating.
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My Strat has the same problem, and I've pinned it to the truss-rod. That thing needs serious work.
On a side note, should BKP's new slogan be "We are all Tim"?
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Press an ear against the mid rear of the neck whilst tapping the top (around first fret) of the neck, also check machine heads for loose buttons, ferrule washers etc.
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Usually when I get pickups rattling, it's the way the pickup's sitting.
I've got two doing it at the moment:
My neck Mule - it's either the springs, or mebbe the braided wire rattling against the pup. If I give it a good wobble it goes away. Next time I have this guitar in pieces I'll be looking into it, mebbe adding more foam under the pickup.
My neck Sultan. Not sure what's doing this at the moment. I suspect the rubber round the screw is too short, so the thing isn't as tight as it could be for the pickup height I'm using at the moment. Not too worried though, these pups are probably moving guitar in the next few months.
My SG develops a loud buzz sometimes as well. Even though I know exactly what it is, it always takes me a few minutes to track it down :roll: - the switch tip comes loose and annoyingly vibrates to A :lol:
Anyway, if it doesn't come through the amp - I tend not to get too worried. I used to use an Epi Les Paul that had awful rattling in the living room. It was the plastic buttons on the tuners, they were all loose. It really annoyed me, but had no effect in rehearsals/gigs so I never bothered fixing it.
Actually (nothing to do with your problem) this last bit reminded me of something about microphonic humbuckers. This is if you're stuck with microphonic feedback in a "no time/money to get them replaced/potted" situation. When I was gigging with that Epi, I found you could tame the squeals by fiddling with the polepieces. Get the thing squealing, then touch each polepiece with the screwdiver. On that Epi, I found that I could usually reduce or stop the squealing by touching one or may two polepieces. I learnt that all I had to do was adjust those slightly (sometimes even just loosen and tighten again to the same setting) and the problem went away for that night.
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Last time I thought a pickup was buzzing, it was the spring around the screw used to adjust the height for the neck pickup.
Following Wez's blue tack method is a good way to isolate the source by trial and error.
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If you have an ABR-1 TOM bridge, those are prone to rattling. Also the pickguard.
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defo sounds like the trussrod to me.
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My Strat has the same problem, and I've pinned it to the truss-rod. That thing needs serious work.
On a side note, should BKP's new slogan be "We are all Tim"?
reminds me of this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u93bhAimFFU