every metal part on 60s Traditional Jaguar microphonic - still the claws?

[chromewaves]

I've got a nearly brand-new Fender Japan 60s Traditional Jag that seems to have gotten a lot more microphonic lately; even at modest volume with some gain, it's squealing. Pretty sure it didn't do that when I got it 6 months ago. And pretty much every metal part - the pickup selector switches, vibrato, bridge - is quite loudly microphonic. I can also hear signal coming through even with all the pickups off.

I know the conventional wisdom is the claws are loose and need to be potted against the pickups. Is that still the case with these symptoms? Should I get the whole pickup assembly potted? could anything else be at fault?

[forestgreen]

If you're getting signal with all pickups off is it possible a ground wire has come loose?

[jthomas]

I held off responding because 1) I have no direct experience with this problem and 2) so all I can do is guess.

First: Have you isolated the problem to the guitar? Alternately, if you are playing the guitar through a tube amp, tubes (esp preamp tubes) also can get microphonic. Have you tried the offending guitar through another amp to make sure that the problem is in the guitar?

Second: Almost all (maybe all) electric guitars have capacitors attached to the tone control(s), generally to adjust how much treble bleeds off to ground. Caps can be quite microphonic and I have to wonder if one in your guitar has failed or has a lead touching something that it should not. If you check out the guitar's electronics, tapping on the caps while the guitar is plugged into an amp and the amp is on, should let you know if that is the problem.

[alexpigment]

I've had this problem before on a JM partscaster, and I couldn't figure out why. When I later decided to change pickups out, I realized that a younger & dumber version of me had put a metal baseplate under the bridge pickup and didn't think to pot the connection between the baseplate and the pickup. So under heavier gain, the baseplate was just vibrating against the magnet polepieces and feeding back.

I would *guess* that the claw is vibrating against your polepieces, and the other microphonic symptoms may just be sympathetic vibrations from the pickup. Probably worth taking care of the low hanging fruit before your brain's logic convinces you that there are bigger problems.

[Guppy]

I've got a nearly brand-new Fender Japan 60s Traditional Jag that seems to have gotten a lot more microphonic lately; even at modest volume with some gain, it's squealing. Pretty sure it didn't do that when I got it 6 months ago. And pretty much every metal part - the pickup selector switches, vibrato, bridge - is quite loudly microphonic. I can also hear signal coming through even with all the pickups off.

I know the conventional wisdom is the claws are loose and need to be potted against the pickups. Is that still the case with these symptoms? Should I get the whole pickup assembly potted? could anything else be at fault?

Seems like there might be something wrong with the wiring. I think even a phase issue. Where the "signal" wire from one (or both) of the pickups is connected to the entire ground circuit including all the metal parts. You could try to switch the output wiring of the pickups to see if this helps. I don't think there is a short circuit anywhere because then you wouldn't get a signal at all.