My Tele Deluxe hums but only when I'm not touching anything metal. As soon as I touch the bridge, strings or tuners the hum stops.
From what I've read this suggests a shielding, rather than grounding issue. Suggested solutions seem to be:
1. Replace the long, unshielded wire from the jack to the selector with a shielded one
2. Shield the back of the pickguard and control cavities with copper tape
Would these mods fix the hum?
I don't really know what I'm doing and am a little cack handed with a soldering iron, so I'm thinking it may be better to take it to a guitar tech.
Would appreciate any advice - either to make me more confident to take this on myself, or to point me in the direction of a decent guitar tech (NW London - Bucks) who could do this work.
Comments
As ICBM has said on here previously the tele deluxe has an unshielded wire that runs from the jack socket to the switch. So we're going to replace this with a shielded one and shield the cavities, which should fix the hum.
Will post updates here when done.
The unshielded output cable is less than ideal. Replacing it should bring some improvement.
As always, remote diagnosis is difficult without photographs of the actual instrument under discussion.
Nice guitars .I have the classic player thinline tele deluxe. Tele headstock 2x wide range pickups (supposedly?)
2xvolume,2 x tone controls... maple neck. Cool guitars.. .
Fender please take note .
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Odd that fender don't put a shielded cable on themselves. The savings must be tiny!
The hum is gone. Completely.
Thanks to @ICBM for the advice. My guitar tech tested everything, couldn't find the source of the hum and was about to give up and put it all back together until I pointed out the unshielded cable.