Homemade killswitch buzzing

[ment4lbre4kdown]

Hey everyone, I am a complete beginner with electronics, but I have some gear and thought it would be fun to try and make my own killswitch for my guitar.

Now, I've designed it quite differently from what I guess is common practice. I took the end of a standard instrument cable, hooked it up with an input jack that I stole from an old pedal I had lying around, and put a switch in between the two. I then connect this creation into my guitar before i connect the regular cable. Effectively, I have a killswitch situated more or less on the guitar body, that I can tap with my fingers while playing. So far so good.

The problem is, that when I press the switch and kill the signal, the resulting hum is almost as loud as the sound of my guitar. I've not used any fancy stuff like resistors, just a lil' switch. I'm guessing it might have something to do with the way I stripped the instrument cable? Originally it had a wire in the center coated in plastic, and outside of this the second wire was sort of woven all around. I just bunched it all together and made a new coat for each with some electrical tape.

Does anyone have any other suggestions as to where the humming might come from and how to get rid of it?

Also, sorry if this isn't an axtual stompbox per se, but I think it fits the forum :-)

[yodude]

Your design approach sounds like some of the earliest stompboxes. Google "original orange squeezer".

The noise you're getting makes me think you have a grounding issue. Look at a typical guitar plug. The very end (above the little collar) is the "tip". That's where the guitar signal goes. The rest of the shaft is for ground. Now unscrew the sleeve and look at how the wires in the cable connect to the plug. Now plug it in to a jack and see where signal and ground go. Then read about your switch and figure out what you need to do with it. Finally, solder it up and put it in a proper box (again, see the original orange squeezer).

Sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but a lot of people find it interesting and fun. Cool first project. Have fun.

[petemoore]

  It's early I didn't follow exactly...
  KSwitch I used had a little 'click', not bad though, completely perfect for VH.
  It's a momentary from anything, left on the little piece of PCB it came out of, this was probably a button to adjust a monitor contrast or brightness.
  The little bit of pcb made it easy to screw in.
  Basically the connections go directly across the input jack tip/sleeve, and connect the pickup signal output to ground, as simple as that.
The little touch of click only appears sometimes, is rarely terribly loud, disappears pretty much beyond detection when the Distortion is up, and I think the click might help set off a frequency shift which results in added strength in the fedback harmonics when I hit it just right.

[ment4lbre4kdown]

...uh...yeah. Thanks! :-)

That was to complicated for me ;-) instead I used my failure to my advantage and put on some ring mod and phaser. Now my killswitch is a noiseswitch with a really cool effect!

[PRR]

For guitar: kill-switch should SHORT the center and shield together, not open them.

[Ace]

This may help:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Removable-Guitar-Killswitch/