The Electra Forums

Ok, I have an Electra Pro Endorser from 1982 with two humbuckers. All Original hardware and electrical as far as I know. Anyway, we were playing last night, when in between songs I adjusted my guitar on my shoulder which caused the leather strap to make a squeaking noise down near the the strap lock. Cheap strap! Anyway.....the squeaking/creaking sound the leather made was heard audibly through my amp. I did it again a couple of times and sure enough every time I moved my strap side to side on the strap lock, my amp made that squeaking/creaking. I mean the sound coming out of the amp sounded actually like squeaky leather; almost as if I was holding up a microphone to the strap when it creaked.

I've heard of pickups acting like microphones before but this was really weird. The other strange thing was that the sound only happened on a highly distorted, fairly hot tone. It wasn't as bad on clean tones and basic over drive tones. Anyway, the other guitarist, who been around for a while said she had never heard of such a thing before, so that leads me here. Does anybody know what could cause this to happen? Or better yet, does anyone even understand what I'm trying to say in the vague and rambling post? haha

My guess is that you pickups are somewhat microphonic, particularly when set to your tone settings. The wood of the guitar transfered the vibrations to the pickups etc... To verify, maybe, try it with just the bridge pickup and then just the neck pickup. I would expect the bridge pickup to get a stronger signle. Could be a cool sound effect

Thanks for the info Workingman!!

I've heard 'creaking' from straps through an amp before, like you describe, it is going to be more noticeable at higher gain settings, but I wager you can't hear it when you or the band is playing.

What's the serial number of your X-935? I only know of one other from '82, Scott Lewis' built in December 1982 which is pictured in the Guitar Index area of the website. The latest serial number I've seen is from September of 1983. Cheers, Mike.

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