Electronic switch hum question

[thefishinmusician]

A customer decided he wanted to use a wall switch for an off/on switch....I was told it would work..( Me and electric stuff do not get along )...I did it, and, when the pickup is on....No hum....When it's turned off, it hums..( 60 cycle, I think...Or, it just doesn't know the words )...I grounded the chassis of the switch to the circuit...That was no help....Any ideas ?

[Pierre-Antoine Roiron]

I guess that when the pickup is off, the output of the switch is lifted (linked to nothing). When using a switch as on/off, the off position should ground the output, not let it lifted.

[thefishinmusician]

Thanks !....I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I know a guy who does...I'll run that by him...

[FRANK]

are you installing this switch with one, two or three Pups and also what or how many conductors are there from each PUP ? 60 cycle or a bad Ground .so you may get more noise with passive pups then the active pups .if your switch is grounded check the potentiometer ground to hot out put with a multi meter then check the pup and make sure you read positive OHMs .After Pierre = it could be the 2ed or 3rd pup making this Hum and no matter what I do here I get hum when I am around my soldiering station while it is on .

so fiddle fiddle fiddle .

slow down go step by step even if you take 5 in between each connection and make them clean as possible.,

So I have seen hum when there are to many grounds going different directions creating a loop of sorts ? 

good day nice in SUNNY iN CENTRAL CALIFORNIA TODAY ..AHHH YEA.

[Rob Mercure]

I'm not sure how you've got the switch wired and I'm really not sure whether the other responses will make sense to you so I'm going to try and restate what I think one was getting at.  Usually a switch "closes" (completes) the circuit in the "hot" lead (not the grounded/sheilded lead) to turn the pick up on and "opens" (breaks) the circuit to turn the P/U off.  But if you have somehow wired the switch in the grounded side of the circuit when you open it you've got the alternating current electromagnetic fields from the power wiring that surrounds us entering the P/U with nothing to limit them (essentially an infinite impedance into the guitar cord -> guitar amp).  The grounded/sheilded wire is often identified coming out of the P/U but sometimes isn't obvious.  If you can manage the get the symptoms to occur while you've got access to the switch and pickups with the switch closed/on unsolder or clip the other lead from the pickup and see if it hums.  If it doesn't then the switch is wired in the ground circuit, if it starts humming again then we've got a different mystery to solve.

 

Rob

[Paul Verticchio]

Since this is not the April Fool's post I thought it was, I'm a bit curious:

 

What kind of guitar is being butchered for this totally inappropriate type of switch?

 

Fishin'....between this and the suggestion to use chicken fat as a neck-lube, your post are just hilarious, and I mean that in a very kind way.

 

Personally, I would've told the guy to find a union electrician to do it (:

 

Best of luck my friend (-:

[thefishinmusician]

A res-o-glass kit guitar....He wanted it for the Townsend Off/on feedback hooting...One pickup....I think my guy has it figured out...Altho this means taking the back off and putting it back on again....A nightmare !...

[RETROROD]

HuH...?

And 'cheers' to 'your guy'....LOL