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Heritage 555 noise question. Help, please. :)

MathNJazz314

By MathNJazz314
in Heritage Guitars

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MathNJazz314 Newbie

MathNJazz314

Posted
Posted

I was hoping one of you knowledgeable forum members would be able to help me out with a noise I am hearing when I use the bridge pickup on my 2004 Heritage 555 (which has HRW pickups). I almost exclusively use the neck pickup and that's why the noise only recently came to my attention (I guess I didn't test out the bridge pickup thoroughly enough after I purchased it from its former owner). My main suspect for the cause of the noise is the bridge pickup's somewhat bent volume pot (it was like that when I got it). I first noticed the noise when I was adjusting the heights of the pickups. I went to test the bridge pickup and it was extremely crackly/muddy sounding. I thought I had just raised the pickup too high, so I lowered it down and that seemed to clear things up. However, I went to play with the bridge pickup yesterday and I still noticed a faint crackle/sizzle behind a few bassy notes (around frets 4-5 on the low E). I tried lowering the pickup down further, but it's still there in the background behind a few notes and the pickup is quite low now (maybe a 1/16 inch below the pickup housing).

So here's my question: do you think this is due to the bent volume pot? Or could this be due to a problem with the pickup itself? Are there any tests (with a multimeter or otherwise) I should try to determine the cause? I am leaning towards just replacing the pot to see if that fixes the issue.
Thanks in advance for any help!!!
Best,
Greg
Gitfiddler Mentor

Gitfiddler

Posted
Posted

Welcome to the HOC, Greg.

 

From your description it sounds like the culprit might be in the wiring harness, possibly close to the rear pickup. The only way to get to the issue is what I call 'semi-surgery'. Unless you feel comfortable fishing out wires, pots and stuff through an F-hole, I'd recommend having a qualified guitar tech examine the entire wiring, starting with the rear pickup.

HANGAR18 Experienced

HANGAR18

Posted
Posted

It seems that I cooked a volume pot on one of my PRS guitars when I was soldering in some new pickups. (It uses a very small circuit board) So I've got a problem with it now in that it stays on 100% all the time until you get to zero and then it cuts in and out on its own. So, I'm inclined to think that if you've got a damaged volume pot, that might be the cause of your difficulties.

 

My first inclination is exactly what Gitfiddler said and take it to someone. But upon further consideration, since it is a semi-hollow body and any work you do to it is going to have to go through the f-holes and pickup holes, it might get expensive. Here they charge $1.00 per minute to work on guitars. So, maybe this is a good opportunity/excuse to install one of those drop in pre-wired pot kits from RSguitarworks or something. If you don't like the pickups, you can get those replaced at the same time. My point is that if it is all going to cost the same to remove and reinstall parts, you might as well go for an upgrade at the same time.

MathNJazz314 Newbie

MathNJazz314

Posted
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Posted

Thanks for the welcome and thanks for the help, everyone! I think I figured out the issue and it was a relatively simple one. No surgery needed this time thankfully. I believe the problem was that I don't use the bridge pickup much at all, and therefore the pickup selector rarely gets used. So I think it got a bit dirty. After exercising the switch a bit, the crackling noise was gone when I selected the bridge pickup. Therefore, I was able to raise the pickup back up to where it should be and things seem okay now.

 

Here's a quick picture of the guitar for anyone that was interested. Thanks again. Have a great day.

 

http://imgur.com/ezEwu0h

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