Dot pickup hum

[rufiopan]

ok guys, so i bought a multimeter. its a cheap analog one, like the one i used to use in high school, but seems to be working for me very well. actually got what looks like negative 0, the needle went past the 0 all the way to the ohm symbol on everything i could touch, which was everything but the bridge volume pot and the neck tone pot. so what are the other things that could be wrong with the guitar if it is not a grounding issue???

[rufiopan]

duh, ok, i didn't have it zeroed. everything is good, but when i put it on the bridge pup, it rests usually on 0, but will briefly jump to .5, usually not as high though. usually .2 or .3; what does that mean? still seems very low, so i would think its still grounded, right?

[rufiopan]

man, i have to stop posting on here before anyone else has a chance to get back. but before i drop like 40-60 bucks on a cable, i am using pretty cheap cbi cables. i was just going to order the monsters, but i figured i'd check some reviews on these. i guess they are double shielded, and no one else has had a problem with them making noise. some people actually like them better than monsters. idk, i usually use pretty run of the mill cables like these, and don't know much about fancy smancy expensive cables. are they really shielded that much better than traditional cables???

[rufiopan]

and one last thing i just noticed; it reads zero on the pup adjustment screws, and also on the screws on the pups, but only on the outside ones (e strings). all the other ones have no reading, or max reading, whatever you want to call it. i don't know what that means, but figured it'd be worth mentioning. i'll seriously lay off now; i'm sure your inboxes are overflowing with notices that i keep posting hahaha. but thanks for helping.

[KX36]

now its making some weird like clicking sound!!! its in a rhythm' date=' like someone is tapping eighth notes at 100bpm. i don't know what the hell is going on. it sounds like its getting worse. i'm going to buy the mm right now.[/quote']

I think that might be your watch, if you're wearing a mechanical one. I get it picking up the metal moving inside my watch when I forget to take it off.

[The_Buffalo]

First of all, I don't know if you can call mine a Dot, because it has blocks instead of dots, & Epiphone may have made some other, internal changes that make it different from yours, but here goes:

 

Running through a Vox AC4TVH, there is a little bit of hum that doesn't go away until I turn the amp's volume down to zero, (or turn it off), no matter what I do to the guitar. The hum gets louder when I plug in my electric sitar, which uses a single coil pickup. turning the sitar increases & decreses the hum.

 

I live in a basement apartment - it's very quiet down here, so quiet I can hear the clock on the wall ticking. The hum from the amp is louder than that, but not much.

 

You can buy hum buster pedals, to kill 60 cycle hum - I know Seymor Duncan makes one.

 

[rufiopan]

ok, so when i do find a spot where there isn't much of the hum that i am talking about, there IS the hum when i am not touching the strings, bridge, etc. but the MM says everything is grounded properly? since everything is grounded to the cable input jack, does that mean that its probably coming from the cable? and the clicking sound only comes from one amp.

[rufiopan]

and no i am not wearing a watch. nice guitar by the way! its just called an es-335 or what? if i had a few more bucks, i probably would have opted for the casino or sheraton, but you know. i didn't.

[The_Buffalo]

... its just called an es-335 or what?

 

 

The headstock says "Epiphone". The truss rod cover says "ES-335". The label inside says "Dot ES 335 I T".

[rufiopan]

i could see the head stock but i didn't see that it said it was a dot. that's pretty neat though did it cost anymore? i think i've seen one a very long time ago but i'm not really sure.

[rufiopan]

and it is much, much louder than that. but only on the lead channel, clean it sounds pretty much how you explained it. i can get it to a reasonable level with the volume low, but when i start turning it up it gets pretty out of hand, and like i said there are only certain positions that make it bearable. i'm taking it to a friend's tomorrow, but don't really even have access to another guitar right now. if anybody has any input, please let me know. at least if my guitar is grounded properly, and what else could be wrong with the guitar...if there is anything else other than grounding.

[rufiopan]

so i took the guitar to a shop; we don't really have any locally so i took it to one in the city where i work. the owner said it was just the inherent qualities of the guitar.

 

but i noticed a nick on the head that i didn't before, and like i said, the tuners were crooked.

 

so the place where i ordered it sent me another.

 

tuners are straight, no nicks. and the hum isn't really better, but it doesn't pick up nearly as much interference.

 

slight problem though, the sound isn't as full, and the tone pots don't seem to adjust the tone as much as i would like. if i have them set to 0, the change of tone between pickups is almost unnoticeable.

 

with both quitars set on the same tone settings, the new one sounds a little thinner, but it is also brighter. unplugged it seems to sound brighter.

 

i am thinking that raising the neck pickup should take care of the problem, but i'm sitting at work, and can't do it now. any other suggestions?

 

by the way, it does seem a little top heavy, like the body is lighter, though overall the guitars seem to weigh the same.

[Petrosrock]

5 months after I bought my sg g400 it started humming specialy in the distortion channel. I went to the local store and the guy there replaced smth in the cable jack of the guitar costing about 5 euros. Since then I ve never had a problem.

If it makes sounds when you move the cable in your guitar it must be the same.

[rufiopan]

i managed to get the second dots tone very close, maybe even better than the other's, with that pup adjustment. and without the hum and without the nick and without the crooked tuners. haha! success.

 

but i'm wondering what the first would sound like with some tweaking....

 

i did tinker a little, and it didn't seem to cause the same changes as in the other. i'm just not going to mess with it and send it back. i'm happy with the other one now.

 

so... thanks to everyone who helped out. i appreciate it.

[davedadude]

i bought a korean made dot in march brand new. i run it straight thru either a fender deluxe reverb or fender vibro champ tube amps and, mine has no hum at all. never did. i play the dot more than i play my new american deluxe stratocaster too. i LOVE my dot. only problem i have from factory is, the tone pots crackle slightly when turning them but, no biggie.

[davedadude]

by the way, thats my actual dot in pic on my avatar. i removed the "e" logo from the pickgaurd cos it was about to fall off.(its in a plastic protective bag incase i want to glue it back on sometime) i took off the butterscotch witchhat knobs and put on some black glass speed knobs and, (not pictured) i put a black gibson rythem/treble ring on pickup switch. if i can figure out how to load pics on here i will post a few. im really proud of it...oh,...and straplocks too...thats mandatory on ALL my guitars.

[rufiopan]

yeah i don't really have any hum at all with the new one either. i'm using a marshall, though, and only get it when i've got the drive cranked. and it really doesn't happen much then either, its more like "noise" than hum really, sort of like interference or feedback, because when i move away from the amp it goes completely away, only it doesn't sound like feedback, and it isn't the same interference as the first one. again, its almost never there, only if i'm very close to the amp or electronics.

[rufiopan]

and i just ordered ernie ball super locks in nickel, and am getting those black gibson speed knobs sometime too. i'm more worried about getting gib 57 and a burstbucker in there, though, although it sounds great now. it is a little brighter in tone than the other one.

 

i was going to get a korean made casino that looks just like your dot, but couldn't cough up the dough fast enough and someone else bought it. it was a beautiful. but the dot has its own nuances, and i love it as well.

[rufiopan]

btw, my mother is korean, so i would much prefer to buy a korean epi than chinese. i can believe that they are higher quality. i'll tell you what, though, i never expected a chinese model to be of such high quality as this guitar. i'm sure that its not everyone they pump out though, look at the last one, haha.