Unwanted feedback

[jon5150]

I have 3, John 5 custom telecaster guitars. Amazing guitars. 2 of witch are the Squire versions. These 2 guitars are pretty much exact besides paint and cosmetics, and as well both have this weird issue.

If I play any of my amps with a high gain setting (Meaning over 5), both of these guitars will feed back, even if you are muting the strings. Its like a low end hum. I contacted Fender and they state the guitar is set up for that. That's fine and dandy if your doing nothing but crazy leads and super amazing distorted rhythms. The only problem is when you want that guitar to be quiet, in that heavy gain setting...its not going to happen unless you turn down the volume pot...(There is no Tone pot on these guitars)

I don't want to change out pickups..and really don't want to change the settings on my amps for these 2 guitars. My fix for the past years has been a floor bound volume pedal I just jump on....

Is there some kind of resistor or potentiometer that could be installed, or mabe use reverse polarity on the pickups to tame them down just a tich?
Has anybody else seen this on other guitars?

[Jasaoke]

That's not an uncommon problem with single-coil pickups. A decent noise gate will do the same thing as your volume pedal, only it will do it for you. Higher end gates give you more control over how exactly they open and close. If the hum/noise is always present in your source signal, there is nothing that can be done to seperate it from the sound of the guitar, if your pickups hum, they're always gonna hum.

[Colton]

gate?

edit: or eq?

[StumbleFingers]

You might have a grounding or shielding issue. Have you compared the wiring to your third guitar that doesn't hum? Do the Squiers have any shielding tape or paint in the control cavity? If your John 5s have humbuckers they should be naturally quieter than a typical Strat or Tele and a bad ground may very well be the cause.

You can try lowering the pickups if you have them set pretty high. That'll change the sound a bit but a lot of pickups actually sound beefier if they aren't hugging the strings.

Ultimately, it all may come down to having lower quality parts in the Squiers. Swapping out pickups would be the last resort but that may be what's needed. And there's no shame in riding the volume control all night. You'll see guys do that with $25k cork-sniffer guitars. Sometimes it's just the nature of the beast.

[jon5150]

The 2 both have 2 humbuckers in them. Ive noticed some forums state it may be microphonics...not sure what that means but Im going to google it here shortly. I have a humdebugger pedal im also going to throw in the mix..that may do the trick.

Thanks guys

[jon5150]

Just put 2 Dimarzio d Activator pickups in the bridge positions for these 2 teles. Problem solved. Sounds great and John 5 uses these in his guitars. Great pickups!