is your guitar noisy when your not touching the strings?

is your guitar noisy when your not touching the strings?

[vw]

Just in case someone misses the comments below, I will re-state. The opening expanation is 100% wrong.
Noise that goes away when you are touching the strings, and comes back when you are not touching them, is NOT a ground problem. It is a sign of a correctly grounded guitar.
Otherwise the noise would not go away when you touch the strings. When you touch grounded strings, the guitar is then grounding YOU - your big body noise-attracting antenna. That's what makes the noise go away.
You will note that he does not actually demonstrate that grounding the guitar made the noise when not touching the strings go away. Because that cannot happen.
The fact that you get noise when not touching the strings means that you are in a noisy environment, and usually have an unshielded guitar. Shielding the guitar with grounded shielding, or finding a less noisy environment, should help with that.
If the noise does NOT go away when you touch the strings, THAT usually indicates the lack of string grounding (most often via the bridge).

[itsrasalhague]

To add to this, I found out that wearing slippers reduced the noise than playing barefooted. Isolating yourself from the floor helps with noise reduction.

[stuartchapman]

Although some of your topics are stuff I already know. I like your style and no nonsense vids. I think they'll demystify and encourage people to have a go at building/modding/repairing.

[cdh]

I should have seen this video when it came out. I've had this issue for 2 years on one of my Les Pauls after I swapped pickups, and while I knew it had to do with grounding, didn't understand why until about a few weeks ago, when I realized that the ground wire coming from the tailpiece was loose on the tailpiece side (so impossible to see inside the cavity and given it was soldered to the pot there was no movement possible either.) I just fixed it by pushing a new ground wire in, when deciding to redo the whole cabling (and putting new pots in as one was damaged) less than 2 weeks ago and only today your video was in my recommendations. Too late for me, but i'm sure very helpful for others running into this issue! Well explained!

[gnawbabygnaw]

You sure about this? Actually the way you know if you have a ground problem is if the buzz gets louder when you touch the strings. If the buzz goes away when you touch them it’s normal. No ground problem. Close but no cigar.

[metamodern]

Information is good, but not complete. Grounding doesn't exist in a vacuum and it's not limited to guitar itself. If your gear is not grounded it can cause the same symptoms. A simple case happened to me: I plugged the guitar into soundcard, soundcard into laptop and laptop into the electric outlet. The buzzing was stopping when I touched the guitar, but my laptop is metal too so I noticed that when I touched laptop the buzzing was going away as well. I removed the laptop plug from the outlet and the buzzing stopped. The core reason was that the outlet was not having the grounding connection. So, it's not always your guitar, but it's a good place to start checking with your multimeter.

[harmonicseries]

This is not correct, if buzz goes away when you touch string that means the guitar is correctly grounded but not well shielded.

[Untoldanimations]

I thought I had grounding issue but really I think it’s because I live near a transformer. So if I angle the guitar in the right direction I can minimise the noiss

[garypotter]

I had exactly the same problem, drove me crazy! I took the pickup out to trash it and decided to try this. I soldered an extra ground to the back of my pickup (a humbucker), and just for laughs, wrapped it in aluminum foil. NO MORE NOISE!

[errorm]

The human is making the gutiat buzz by being a big watery mass affected by all the waves around it. If you touch your guitar strings and the *hum GOES AWAY* then you dont have a grounding issue. Whatever you are touching is now grounding the human atenna, so the hum goes away.

Touch something like the chassis of a toster or a Kitchen Aid (that is itself grounded) while wearing the guitar on a strap around your body and the hum will go away too.

Hum that gets worse when you touch the strings is bad earthing. Not the other way around

[Rejoice.]

This is probably gonna blow up.
Thanks for the guide.

[masterWindu_]

I have this with almost all of my guitars. I’ve taken it to two luthiers and they both say they are properly grounded and this is just how some guitars are

[johnCjr]

My tele has this problem, Thanks for the help . 😊

[Pickitout]

I had that problem and it was my wall outlet wasn’t grounded. I moved my amp to a different room and plugged in a different socket and all was fine. Try that first .

[ZoneStudios.]

yeah a lot, use like 2 distortion plugins (full gain ) and 1 cabinet + echo + quad delay... so i think its fine for me.

[Shaylok]

I'm still so green to all of this. Didn't know the bridge needs to be grounded.

[deepseadiver]

You just made a nearly 7 minutes long video providing INCORRECT information. It's a very common misconception. If the buzz/hum goes away whey you touch the strings (or the bridge or other conductive part of the guitar) then this means that the guitar is GROUNDED PROPERLY. We act like antennas and it's actually us causing this kind of hum. The hum goes away when touching the strings because at this point we become grounded by the guitar.

[AgionOros]

A strange isue, my guitar works fine when i connect it to the amp but only get a distance low volume sound when it is connected to any type of pedal. My other guitar works fine with the same setup, same cables, pedals e.t.c.

[lewlewlrw]

my telecaster is VERY noisy, and touching the strings doesn't stop it, but when I put my foot on a pedal or my finger on a knob or the control plate, the noise stops

[FeedThemCake]

Oh no. I only wanted to play guitar through my computer and soundcard... I didn't think there'd be all this grounding mumbo jumbo to think about. Almost all the wiring in my guitar is done in tiny cavities like in the volume/tone pots themselves.

Are you sure this isn't simply caused by using an unbalanced TRS cable instead of a balanced one?