Open heart guitar surgery!

well, that was the best I could do at trying to make a wiring diagram... sorry, it's really crappy... perhaps no help at all... but... my guitar is buzzing, but I noticed something, when I have the volume at 10, and the tone at 0, there is no buzz, and the higher I have my tone knob, the more buzz I've got, and the less volume I have, the more buzz I've got (the buzz reaches a peak at about 3 or 4 on the volume knob) and also, it seems that I get a sort of popping noise when I touch the tone knob... not the top of it, but the sides... this seemed strange to me since the knob is made out of plastic...

I was reading up on grounding/sheilding, and it looks as though my guitar alread has a silverish color foil underneath the pots and pickup switch... yet, I'm still getting lots of hum... so when I looked 'under the hood' I find lots of wires... probably more then there should be... and it looks as though I've got ground loops...

there is one other thing that struck me as odd though... that there were several wires soldered together in mid-air! (left side of the diagram) is that normal? anyways, I have a strat type (front loaded) guitar, so, that's supposed to make this all easier... but... I just want to know what I'm doing before I start doing it... cause I know nothing about electronics at all... PLEASE HELP!!!

http://www.ibanez.com/wiring/wire.asp?y=2002&w=GRX40

http://www.ibanez.com/wiring/wire.asp?y=2004&w=GRX40

ok, those are two possibilty's to how my guitar may be supposed to be wired... I'm not sure... cause I don't know what year my guitar is... go to http://www.ibanez.com/wiring/models.asp?t=e and it has all the ibanez wiring diagrams, mine is a GRX40... what I do know is my guitar has a little stick on the back of the headstock that says "Z930517" and "made in china" so... I 'm pretty sure my guitar is the chinese version, not the indoneason (sp?) version... so, if that helps any at all...

Hmm... it may sound like you have a bad connection somewhere... or the pot needs to be replaced. If your guitar is old (8 years or older) or it's a guitar that uses lesser quality production methods... you may just have a bad connection somewhere. If you are familiar with a multimeter you can use that to check all the connections to the pots, to the jack, to the switch, etc... If not, the "buzz" may be coming from the single coils... AKA 60-cycle hum. Some people react differently to the old single coils... I was raised on single coils so I'm use to the hum, most people aren't.... and it bothers them. This can be counteracted by playing your guitar in the 2 or 3 switch positions... your guitar should have a reverse polarity middle pickup... that will cancel out some of the hum when you use it in combination with either the neck or the bridge pickup. Also... about shielding... copper is the best material to shield with.... the silver foil that you are talking about doesn't really do that much at all. You get information about shielding at stew-mac.com. They should have the potentiometers and shielding you will need. They also have some handy information on all that stuff. If that stuff doesn't help you out with diagnosing your problem... sorry. haha. good luck bro

well, my guitar has a s/s/h pu configuration... and 99% of the time I'm playing with the humbucker... so, I don't think it's just my single coils making the noise. although, it definately is a low quality guitar, it cost me about $150, so... yeah... I don't know anything about a multimeter, and I don't think I have one... so... yeah... any other suggestions?

Well a multimeter basically checks for voltage. You place one point at ground then choose the point you would like to test and place the other point there. This allows you to see if there are is any faulty wiring in your system. Obviously if there were complete faulty wiring you wouldn't get any sound at all.... but if a wire was poorly soldered is isn't in good contact with what it's soldered to... it could cause a glitch in your sound. Since you noted that it only makes the sound when you touch the pot... maybe you should check to see if everything is tightened down. Besides these suggestions... it's hard to diagnose electrical problems without actually hearing how the guitar is reacting or being able to see what circumstances it makes the noise. Sorry if this doesn't help you but like I said, wiring is a different story than most any other guitar problem.