When I started out playing the guitar I had my palm (under the pinky finger to be precise) resting on the bridge for basically anything I played. However I began to feel that my hand lacked the freedom and many of the strings (the lower strings) would always have a muted sound.

So I began experimenting with other ways of picking such as anchoring on the pickguard with my pinky or the 'floating hand' position where my hand does not touch anything. I prefer this type but the problem I get is when I pick, say, the high E string, I get a humming sound from all the other strings (including the low E string...) unless I mute every other string.

I'm probably using one of the worst amps ever, a 15 watt unbranded amp that I got for less than £20 (~$40) so was wondering whether it is due to the amp that this noise is being created.
Either that or I'm doing something wrong with my right hand.

Any ideas?

well unless you are palm muting, you don't really need to rest your hand on the bridge. But for a lot of metal, you do need to palm mute the low E string and kind of pull up for the rest of the power chords.
It really depends on the song you are playing. But, i'm fairly sure in all songs, you don't want that humming, my guess is it's either:
a) your pick ups aren't good
or b) you are using a bad technique.

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You should not have your pinky or any of your picking hand fingers "anchoring" on the pickguard when you play (even though some of the best players like Steve Morse have this habit.) The reason why is that when you play more difficult shit those fingers will try and dig into the guitar's body, fucking up your right hand.

Pick with only the required pressure needed to sound the note. It does not take much, especially with alot of distortion.

Try to change your left hand technique in such a way that the finger's extra skin does the job of muting adjacent strings. Thumb behind neck and relaxed, you'll see how you can do this.

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thanks for the tips.

I've begun developing better left hand technique so that if i want to play the low E unmuted (which i rarely do but) I simply let my left hand mute the other strings.

However, when I play something even higher, say the B string, I can only mute the string on top (the G string) with the fretting hand, meaning the low E, A and D string are unmuted. Therefore I end up muting these hands with the right hand.

I think it would be impossible to mute the lower strings without the right hand, and I'm guessing there are no drawbacks to this muting technique.

Just out of interest though, do players like Paul Gilbert who have a floating hand mute the lower strings with their right hand when playing one of the higher strings?

Yeah it really is a bad habit to break...for me different riffs have different hand positions. It sucks when your fucking shredding and you look down and your pinky/ring finger (or both) are rested on your guard. Bad habit nothing detrimental to over all playing......it really is an aesthetic thing. Personal preference. Its like someone telling you that a certain finger has to hit a certain fret in a song. Unless its a lesson involving finger placement, just use the finger that you can get there the fastest and the one that is comfortable to you. Bone structure of the hand comes into play alot, the tips of my pinkys kind of curve in, but fuck it. Youll find a way to play it if you really like guitar.

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