First Build (ST-1M)

[Andyxlh]

Give it some time with the strings at tension as well, the first couple of weeks the neck may move a lot until it all settles in.
My ST took a couple of months to settle, and I have a heel end adjuster in it, so the neck has to come off, at least you’ve a head end adjuster!

Ha! Yes my Frankenstein strat has no height adjust at all, the floyd is flat against the body so the only height adjustment is via neck shims, a similarly irritating position! Interestingly van halen hacked away at the body on his guitar to expose that heel truss rod adjuster.

[geoffro]

Well I've been playing around trying to set up the guitar... almost successfully, it's still gets a little fret buzz in places but I will continue to tweak it and let the neck settle. But I decided that it was time to solder it up and plug it in, which works! hooray! But one weird problem and maybe it's just a single coil thing (my only other guitar is a LP with humbuckers) is the hum. I've shielded it all up, and on volume 10 there is a really quiet hum, but as I roll back to 0 the hum gets worse... is this normal? Or do I need to do something, I bought the treble bleed but haven't installed it yet?

Also again as an unexperienced single coiler, when I put my practice amp to overdriven the hum gets really bad, I'm assuming that's also normal? Sorry if my questions are incredibly stupid. Thanks in advance.

[Simon Barden]

Sounds wrong. A treble bleed won't stop hum.

The one reason for hum is that the jack socket connections have been reversed, so that the signal is connected to the screen connection on the jack socket and the guitar ground to the signal connection.

Otherwise it's normally because a ground connection has been missed or is high-resistance. On the volume pots, is the unused outer tag soldered to the pot casing? Are there ground connections going to all the backs of the pots?

If nothing obvious, post some pictures of the wiring, with as much overall and close-up detail as you can get.

[geoffro]

Thanks Simon, turns out the issue was slightly more embarrassing than any of those. It was the cable, changed to my usual one - not the one that came with the kit and no hum what so ever! Now to give it some time for the neck to settle before tweaking the setup :-)

[FrankenWashie]

Thanks Simon, turns out the issue was slightly more embarrassing than any of those. It was the cable, changed to my usual one - not the one that came with the kit and no hum what so ever! Now to give it some time for the neck to settle before tweaking the setup :-)

Ah yes, that cord is only good for knot tying practice. And it’s not much use for that either