The Steel Guitar Forum

I replaced the input jack on my Carter Starter and now it has a significant hum. I think that I must have wired it up wrong. All it has is a 3 wire 10 pole pickup and a jack. The pickup has a white, red and an unshielded wire. Any suggestions on how to wire it to the jack to eliminate this hum? I should have just snapped a photo before I removed the original jack.

Thanks.

Not completely sure about the exact pickup you have...but I would tie the white and the bare wire to the outside sleeve of the jack, and the red wire to the tip connection.

By the way, guitars have OUTPUT jacks. I have yet to see a PSG with an input jack.

Thanks Michael. I did what you specified but it still has a hefty hum. Here is a picture of the wired output.


Perhaps it hummed before and I never noticed it. Regardless, it's quite loud. Maybe I should invest in a humbucker.

Well darn it anyway.

The only other thing I would suggest is, if you haven't tried it already, is swap the white and red. I looked through a bunch of pickup diagrams and nobody is consistent whether they use white or red (or black for that matter) for the "hot" wire.

I was playing my guitar today -- I usually play the E9 neck, which has a humbucker -- and I switched to the C6 neck -- which has a single-coil -- and it surprised me how loud the hum and buzz were.

Sorry for the bad guidance the first time. Or maybe it is just a hummy pickup. You could try re-orienting things (turn the guitar or move it away from anything that might be generating an EM field).

Good luck.
Mike

Michael your suggestion in your first post was correct. Apparently where I live causes a significant amount of hum for single coil pickups. I plugged my strat in for comparison and in the 4th position it had the same amount of hum that the Carter did.

I guess that I just need humbuckers for St. Paul, MN. Thanks for your help!