Neck pickup noise

[firemedic]

I've been bothering everyone on this forum for over a year trying to abolish a noise issue.
I have an Alvarez Tele copy with 3 pickups.

Neck: Fender Original Vintage
Middle: Texas Special
Bridge: FOV

Soon after I installed this setup, I started getting this awful noise on medium-to-hard pick attack. I added big gridstoppers to my Pro Reverb clone, rewired the guitar, basically everything you would think to do to get rid of this harsh nasty sound. But it's getting worse. It must be the neck pickup.

Has anyone had noise issues (other than 60 Hz hum) with FOV lipsticks?

[HotBluePlates]

I have no experience with those particular pickups.

Does it seem like a possible microphonic issue? Does tapping the pickup itself result in noise?

Is the pickup mounted to the body, as in the original Tele neck pickup, or is it mounted to the pickguard?

I ask because I have an electric that has an odd acoustic buzz, but only on certain notes. I found that the pickguard (which is a vintage style with fewer screws) is buzzing against the guitar body on those notes. I could add more screws to keep the pickguard from buzzing, but the pickups are mounted in such a way that they are not affected by the pickguard buzz, and the noise is not apparent in the amplified sound.

[firemedic]

No, I don't think it's microphonic; tapping on it does not reproduce the sound, and it manifests even at very low volume.

It's mounted on the pickguard. It doesn't seem like a mechanical issue.

I should replace it with the stock Alvarez pickup to be absolutely 100% certain. I was trying to avoid it since I have a little "tweak fatigue" from my new bass amp build. Does that make any sense? I'm getting a little tired of opening things up and messing with them.

Anyway, that's the only way I'll know for sure.

[G._Hoffman]

My first guess would be a bad pickup, but there is one kind of odd one that happens sometimes. 

Some pickguards, particularly if they are shielded, will build up a static charge on their surfaces, which causes the pickguard to start acting a bit like a capacitor, which will occasionally discharge through the electronics, and cause a noise spike through your amp.  The only fix I've ever found for it is to replace the pickguard.  No promises, but it does happen.  You'll never have that problem with a conductive pickguard, like the anodized aluminum ones Fender sells for P-basses, Jazzmasters, and Strats.  Also, I've had one customer who had this problem with several different pickguards on one of his guitars (not overnight, he was OK for a while, then it came back), so I don't know if it was him or his guitar, but it can recur.  We got him an aluminum pickguard, and it went away.

MUCH more likely to be the pickup, though, as this is a very uncommon problem.


Gabriel

[firemedic]

It was the tone cap, how about that? I can't think of why the treble bleed cap to ground would cause signal noise, and on just one pickup. But it did & I'm noise-free now w/ a new cap.

Before I found that I did rip out the aluminum foil DIY shield, out of frustration, from the pickguard but it didn't help.

Thanks for your attention guys! My apologies to Fender and their fine products.