Noise from active pups?

[bonaventura]

A couple of days back I decided to try to record some guitar tracks on my laptop, just for the fun of it. I downloaded and installed audacity on my laptop and made sure that I got the latest drivers. After that I plug my Pacifica 112 (all stock) to my Zoom G7.1 and then connected the zoom to my laptop via USB2.

 

I noticed an increase in noise level right away in the dirty channel. To a level that was really bothering.

 

When I swapped the guitar to EMG 81/81 loaded ESP LTD F401, the noise level was significantly reduced. So I figured that the PAC, being all stock and all, needs shielding (a project that had been loooong delayed).

 

However, when I touched the controls/pup selector of the F401 with my hand, the noise was further reduced to almost dead quiet. I thought the active EMG pups should be adequately shielded and does not require connection to the bridge (indeed, nothing happens if I touched the bridge and strings of the F401).

 

Quick check on the wiring shows that the cavities were painted with some sort of black matte looking paint, i assume it was a conductive paint (assumption only : anyone can veirfy?). And the wires were braided. So the whole wiring seemed to be quite properly shielded.

 

I had thought of connecting the bridge to the negative (like passive pups wiring) but does it make sense at all ?

 

Any suggestions to remove the hum from my ESP F401?

 

Thanks for the advice...

[bonaventura]

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