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Hi everyone, 

New here on Fretsnet, this is my first post :-)

I own a 1982 Gibson Chet Atkins CE, bought it online 'as is'. Preamp, separate volume controls on board seem to work just fine. Nevertheless, there is a substantial ground hum. The hum almost completely stops whenever I touch the jack plate, or the volume/EQ-mount plate or even the shielding paint on the left side top of the backside cavity where the board and battery are stored. The cavity seems to be painted with special shielding paint; the plastic backside cover is shielded. The battery holder is placed on the shielded backside cover. Attached you will find pictures of the preamp wiring in the backside cavity. I have more pictures available of the wiring of the volume/EQ-pots and the jack plate (but I believe I am limited to uploading 3 files per post). 

Is there any (quick) fix to this issue? 

Thanks so much for your time and attention.

Karl Adams - the Netherlands 

Tags: atkins, chet, gibson

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And here are the pics for the wiring of the volume/EQ and jack plate. 

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that low frequency hum that goes away when you touch the jack almost always means the actual piezo pickup element in or under the saddle is damaged and needs to be replaced

your gibson chet should have an LR baggs LB-6 piezo saddle pickup; the guitar is long out of production but baggs still makes that pickup.

as for a "quick" fix, if you contrive to ground the strings then when you touch them that hum will mostly go away, meaning that you can still play it.

if yours has bridgepins then adding a brass plate like the mitchell platemate and wiring it to ground will do the trick, or as an emergency fix you can weave a guitar string through the strings behind the saddle then wrap it around the output jack

wait, scratch that!

it's a "CE", that's the earlier nylon string version. i was thinking of the "SST" steel string.

it doesn't have the LB-6, rather it's an ovation-style wide plastic saddle piezo. it also appears to have individual piezo outputs for each string, with what look like gain adjustment trimpots for each 

the problem is likely still within the saddle element itself, but there are no steel strings to ground so it's not going to be an obvious fix at all.

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