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A possible solution to those Les Paul BFG's with the mysterious open ground noises.

Traumatized

By Traumatized
in Gibson USA

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Traumatized

Traumatized

Posted
Posted

After reading a few of the stories on this message board, and seeing some of you rewire/reconfigure your guitars totally, I figured I'd offer my two cents to save future BFG owners some troubles.

 

I recently bought a used BFG from a local dealer. The thing sounded great at the store, however upon bringing it home, I noticed that there was an insane open ground buzz coming from the amp. So first, I made sure that it wasn't anything in my existing equipment via turning off any lights and using a bunch of other guitars I had through the same setup. When I plugged the BFG back in, the annoying buzz was back.

 

Being that this sounded like an open ground, I pulled out the continuity tester and checked every grounding point from the back of the pots, strings, bridge, bridge post, etc. All registered as having continuity.

 

Realizing that this model is deemed as a "bare-bones" Les Paul, I saw that there was a limited amount of cavity shielding and that the wiring going from the kill switch to the selector swtich was unshielded. The first plan of attack was to replace that with some shielded wiring. With this done, I plug the guitar back in and the buzz was still there.

 

At this point, I'm frustrated and decide to rip all of the electronics out. After doing this, I shielded the cavities totally and then rewired everything from scratch. This was fine anyway, because I was replacing the pickups with a couple of Dimarzio replacements anyway. I made sure that there was only one path to ground to eliminate any ground loops, etc. and wired everything up from there. I plug the guitar in again and the buzz was still there. I was ready to smash the guitar, haha. The fact that this guitar played so phenomenally well was what saved its life.

 

After sleeping on the issue, I decided that I need to recheck my grounds again. This time, I decided to use a test wire with a couple of alligator clips. I fastened one to a ground connection and began touching various areas of the guitar while plugged in to see if the noise went away. Upon touching the strings, the silence was deafening, hahaha. For some reason, the strings and bridge were not making it to ground. I must admit that this had me stumped, especially since I had done the continuity testing before and everything checked out, which prompted me to break out the multimeter again and retest it. It checked out again to be fine.

 

Sitting there confused and pondering the issue, I deducted that the strings and bridge were for some reason, not grounded, but there was continuity between them and ground. This meant that there had to be some sort of conductivity issue. Taking the guitar apart again except for the electronics, I decided to inspect every part in the chain. Upon looking at the bridge and stud, I noticed that there was a degree of corrosion and pitting from the stock "aging" process that gibson performed on the hardware. Could this be the cause of the problem? Was the multimeter able to sense the signal going through, but the ground wasn't making it through?

 

I quick ran and got my mini files, filed and polished the areas where the stop tailpiece meet the mounting studs, and reinstalled everything. I figured now was the moment of truth....I plugged the guitar in and VOILA!!!!...the noise was gone.

 

So the moral of the story is if you have this annoying, illogical open ground noise coming from your BFG, take the stop tailpiece off and see if there's any of the pitting and corrosion from the "aging" process before thinking of dismantling the whole thing. Hope this helps! ;)

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ALIEN8

ALIEN8

Posted
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That makes sense.

 

I may be off here, but don't multimeters supply power stronger than an amp for resistance checks? The multimeter could have been 'arcing' around the corrosion...

 

Nice find, I think that deserves a free BFG!

 

It would be interesting to see if the GOTW version of this does it too, since it does not have the aged bridge hardware. Cuda, you have any issues with yours?

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leopold

leopold

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Excellent information! This problem is one of the reasons I dumped a new 2006 R9. My tech did all of the meter testing you did except for the tailpiece/studs. It all checked out but it always had that buzz. I bet this tip could apply to much more than the BFGs. I'll pass this info to the tech...good work.

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elessar820

elessar820

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I shielded the cavities in mine and put a shielded wire in to connect the selector switch and jack (mine is set up as 3 way 2 volume 2 tone). When I first did the rewiring job, it hummed horribly, I let three techs see it, they thought it was the tailpiece ground, it wasn't. I brought it to a fourth guy, as soon as he saw the clear covers and unshielded wire, he knew what was wrong. The Burstbucker 3 and PAF do hum a bit being unpotted and a single coil, so some noise sound be expected.

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Tim Plains

Tim Plains

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Dream on! Your finish can't hold a candle to mine!

No it's not, but even if it was I wouldn't be able to tell you.

I haven't played that thing in weeks. She's up for sale, actually. Think I found the lucky buyer today.

If it doesn't sell, I'll (obviously) keep it and do what I've been wanting to do for a while now.

Swap out the BB3 for another single coil.

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Traumatized

Traumatized

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+1 What aging?

Where do you see aged hardware?

Picture023.jpg

 

Per the site's description:

 

"A decidedly nontraditional Les Paul for rockers who want a Les Paul with attitude and don't care about good looks. It has the sound and playability you'd expect from an Les Paul while its raw look stands Les Paul styling on its head: unsanded top no binding no pickup rings no truss rod cover no toggle switch rings no fretboard position indicators (dots on the side only) with wooden knobs that have no numbers. This rough and tough guitar has sonics to match: steamy hot tones from the novel pickup combination of a single coil P-90 in the neck and a BurstBucker 3 in the bridge - like having a Les Paul Special and a Standard in one guitar. Mini toggle pickup selection switch located near two volume and one master tone controls. Kill switch located where rhythm/lead switch used to be. "Distressed" stop bar Tune-o-matic bridge and Grovers complete the raw look of this very different looking Les Paul."

 

The word they use is "distressed"....My BFG is a 2006 red one with very "distressed" hardware. There is a good amount of wear to the plating, along with a fair amount of pitting.

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  • 2 years later...
Kylemast

Kylemast

Posted
Posted

Hi there, i went and took off the stop-bar, i took some Emery Cloth and started going at the inside of where it connects to the Screws and did the same on the giant screws in the body until you can see metal. I put it back on and re-strung it, But there is still Buzz! Im ready to stab this guitar because of this issue. Any Ideas?

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Born ta Lose

Born ta Lose

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That Ground buzz has driven me crazy as **** too! I've had my BeeFerG for a lil over a year, and the only solution I've come across is to constantly mute the strings when yr not playing. Also, the killswitch makes some kind of hum, and even when it's engaged you can still hear signal from the PU(s)- WTF?

 

Anybody got any solutions for wiring the Killswitch so it actually performs it duty 100%?

I'm going to try that bridge thingy, too. I'll let you know how it works out.

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martinh

martinh

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I may be off here, but don't multimeters supply power stronger than an amp for resistance checks? The multimeter could have been 'arcing' around the corrosion...

 

 

You're thinking of a megohmeter, which is used for finding subtle ground leaks that only occurr at high voltage. Those things can pack quite a punch. However, a standard multimeter set to the ohms range provides very low current, and a voltage less that 0.5v. This is why there is usually a special range for testing transistors - the voltage provided by the meter is generally too low to turn on a diode or transistor junction.

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martinh

martinh

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when checking these things with a multimeter, remember to use the lowest possible range (usually 0-200 ohms) and look for close to zero ohms resitance between ground and the strings, rather than using a "continuity checking" function. The continuity check on many meters indicates continuity for resistances as high as 1000 ohms. 1000 ohms in your ground path can cause hum.

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