[Solved]Peavey AT-200 ground hum too loud to ignore - even stopping fret control

Started by peanutismint, December 16, 2017, 02:55:18 AM

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peanutismint

SOLVED THIS by loosening all strings, taking bridge plate off, finding that ground wire was very loose (they just stuck it on with some kind of sticky tape that had perished?! Because: China.) so I scraped some paint off between where the wires go through the bridge plate, soldered the ground wire back on to bit of the plate I'd scratched, and the hum was GONE. Now I can tune/play my guitar as before (except better - much clearer signal!). Will leave the rest of this post here for clarity:




I've had my AT-200 for going on three years now and it's always had a small amount of background noise/hum from a bad ground/earth loop, especially noticeable when playing through high gain or lots of pedals where it sounds like a constant phasing/distortion sound, but recently it seems to have gotten a lot worse/louder and is now present to the point where I can no longer control the guitar via the fret control settings (meaning the hum is too loud/interfering with the Antares board 'hearing' the string I'm plucking to control it, if that makes sense).

I've tested/proven this by opening the back panel of the guitar and putting my finger on some of the black painted area to ground the circuit, at which point the hum disappears and the fret control system is able to hear the strings I'm fretting correctly again and change settings as normal.

I've heard other people complain about the hum issues on the AT-200 well I don't understand electronics well enough to know how to fix them. I'm assuming it would be as simple as soldering a piece of wire from a specific part of the circuit to a common ground?

Anyone know how to do this?

Elantric

Quote from: peanutismint on December 16, 2017, 02:55:18 AM
SOLVED THIS by loosening all strings, taking bridge plate off, finding that ground wire was very loose (they just stuck it on with some kind of sticky tape that had perished?! Because: China.) so I scraped some paint off between where the wires go through the bridge plate, soldered the ground wire back on to bit of the plate I'd scratched, and the hum was GONE. Now I can tune/play my guitar as before (except better - much clearer signal!). Will leave the rest of this post here for clarity:



I had to do the same with my AT200

about grounding and shielding - myself i avoid guitars with "Black" metal hardware, Black plated bridges, Black output jack plates, etc.  Get an ohm meter, set to the lowest setting (0-100 ohms) and measure all your Black metal parts and discover that the Black Oxide plating on many guitar exhibits a very  Hi-Z impedance and is a poor electrical conductor. 

I recently worked on a two year old Peavey guitar with all Black plated metal parts and it was the noisiest  guitar I have played. Turned out there was an ineffective  string ground because the non conductive black plating on the bridge was acting as a dielectric insulator to the factory string ground wire sitting under the bridge.