Fellow Bassers
I have two bass guitars, one bass has a buzz through the amp sounds like an electrical static buzz that goes away when I touch the metal cable or metal knobs - without playing any notes. The other bass does not have this issue; same cable same amp. It sounds like a grounding thing in the bass? Maybe add or subtract a ground wire in the guts of the body? Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Im thinking a ground wire to the shield of the jack on the bass?
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Hey @oscarq if you click on the magnifying glass and search for a topic you might find your question has already been asked and indeed answered before.
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@oscarq I’m fairly new with the bass, but maybe this will help. I got my first bass at a pawn shop and while it’s pretty beat-up it sounds fine. However, when I have my single tone knob past 2ish it makes that same kind of sound. I checked cable, amp, etc and it was troubling me until i determined it was from that tone dial.
I just keep it at 0, and its fine, which leads my inexperience to believe my pickup (and perhaps yours) is malfunctioning. I’m hoping others read this and can confirm or deny this, and/or elaborate further. Im sure mine is lowend and old and needs replacing.
Hello
In my somewhat limited experience, pickups are pretty bullet proof unless someone damaged them. It’s just a fine wire wrapped around a magnet. Now the volume and tone knobs get dirty and worn, there is a cleaner spray you can use to clean the knob workings.
My volume know was noisy and some cleaner fixed that.
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Yeah agree. You can even fix scratchy pots without the cleaner sometimes.
Pickups - while they are a common source of noise, they aren’t usually going to degrade over time 
They can though. Most common way I have heard of is people that used steel wool on their neck or frets or something and had the filings get in the pickups.