Lakland 55-02 neck pickup hum/buzz

[TobyC]

Hi Basschatters,

This is another one of those ,"my bass makes a noise" threads - apologies in advance but I thought I could try to mine the collective wisdom here!

I wonder what the experience of other lakland owners is. My 55-02 with the lakland pickups and Lh3 preamp works perfectly on the bridge pickup and is dead silent when not being played. However, when on the neck pickup there is a perceptible hum that goes away when I touch the strings, bridge or any other component in the cavity. I've checked with a guitar tech- everything is grounded properly (although I note that small wars are fought over whether this issue is a grounding or shielding issue).  Just in case there was a ground loop we tried to ground direct to the input jack, but no luck for it to disappear. 

It's certainly not extremely noisy and not a deal breaker for gigging. But if recording etc it would be a problem. 

I should say it is only bad with the volume turned up on full, and can be further emphasized by boosting the mids. However it's not a preamp issue as it is still there in passive mode. 

The cavity is shielded, and the neck pickup is a split coil humbucker in a single coil housing so should be silent. 

Do other lakland owners have this issue? it has cropped up from time to time on Talkbass, so it's not an unheard of issue. If so how did you address it? Any non-lakland owners have thoughts? If it was a shielding issue then surely it would occur on both pickups...

Thanks 

Toby

Edited November 21, 2020 by TobyC
Typo

[TobyC]

Update -my guitar tech got the bottom of the issue and solved it. It turns out that the pickup cavity, whilst shielded was not grounded. We ran a wire from a pot in the rear cavity to the pickup cavity and screwed it down. Instant blissful silence!