A pickup can produce popping noises from human touch if the magnets or pole pieces aren’t grounded correctly, or not grounded well enough.
One solution to this is to, and I’m directly quoting here, “apply conductive copper foil with conductive adhesive against the bottom of the pickups and run a new wire to ground.”
That linked article explains everything you’d ever want to know about why you would want to do this, why swapping the hot/common wires doesn’t work, why pickup manufacturers even knowing there’s a grounding issue will continue to wind a pickup one way and not the other, and you’ll even get to see graphs on what actually happens with human touch vs. no human touch.
If you as a builder built a bass for a customer (or yourself), and the pickups pop when touched and you *know* you’ve done every single thing you can to fix it but nothing has worked, try the copper foil option.
There have been many a builder/luthier who have built basses where that damned pickup popping starts and they’ve pulled out their hair trying to figure out what the problem was; this is especially frustrating when one player (such as yourself) encounters no popping but the person you built it for does. And as the builder knows, swapping the pickups out with the same exact set doesn’t fix the popping issue.
The end result is that yes, some people are just more naturally conductive than others and will cause pickups to pop no matter what. And while applying conductive copper foil against the bottom of the pickups does combat pickup popping, it’s not a guaranteed solution…
…but at least it gives you another option to solve a pickup popping problem, should it present itself.
I used to have that problem with my Fender P-Bass. I narrowed it down to the plastic pickguard, which I’m guessing had nylon in it(?). Anyway, whenever I’d touch the pickguard with the side of my hand, I’d get the crackles and pops after rubbing on it a bit. I tried wiping it with anti-static wipes and what not, but what eventually worked was that I got a metal pickguard shield to install behind it. Now it doesn’t do it at all anymore. It’s all nice and silent. I know that’s not an option for all basses, but for the Fender it worked out really well.
I’ve noticed this problem with my fender P-Bass, although it only happens on occasion (I guess some days I’m more conductive than others). I was wondering if there could possibly be an even simpler solution. If I wore a pair of thick, rubber-soled boots, couldn’t that technically solve the problem?
No, because it’s a different sort of a problem. In the case of the Fender P-Bass, rubbing the plastic on the pickguard was causing the noise, since you’re building static by rubbing on it with your hand. Those metal back plates are specifically made to fit those pickguards, and you’re mounting the pots and jack directly through it, and those are connected to the ground that runs to the bridge, so it fixes the problem. You could achieve the same effect by covering the back of your pickguard entirely with that copper tape they use to shield pot chambers as well as long as it was fully covered and making good ground. I just found the metal back plate to be the quick and easy solution, and it works perfectly. Haven’t had a problem since.
Thanks! I’ll look into getting one of those plates installed. Although it’s possible that I’m thinking of a different problem. My preferred equalizer includes very high level of bass, low level low-mids, mid level hi-mids, and slightly over mid level on the trebles. Lately, I’ve been getting a “static” sound with this equalizer, so I’ve been turning up my 150 and 350 on my equalizer to fix this. It fixes this problem, but removes some of the tone I want.
I’ve had rack gear that had noise just from being in the rack. Like something wasn’t grounding properly. I’d unscrew it from the rack rails and it’d be fine. Might want to pull the stuff out of your rack one at a time and see if you can narrow down the problem. As for the shield, it never hurts, and it’s a pretty inexpensive way to get rid of pickguard static.
By the way, if you’re not using one already, a rack mounted power conditioner never hurts either.