noisless wiring for single coil

Pickups, wiring schemes, switch techniques and onboard active electronics for guitars and basses
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copachino
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Post by copachino »

i have seen something called LLItch back guard system, and seems to work fine, its there any other way to make a single coils guitar pasive noiseless??

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Post by CHEEZOR »

The short answer: Yes!

The longer answer: There are many ways to achieve this, but most have drawbacks of some kind. Sort of like when they invented humbuckers to solve single coil hum. They solved the problem fairly well, but the pickups no longer sound like single coils. Some of the approaches that people have taken are: shielding, dummy coils, active pickups, re-designed pickups like Lace Sensors, noise gates, or noise cancelers. Take your pick. Probably not what you want to hear, but I find that with decent pickups, decent wiring, and playing with reasonable levels of gain then noise isn't enough of an issue to proceed any further. You may also want to look at quieter amps, correcting ground issues, or where you stand in relation to the amp. I doubt there is an easy solution to this problem or it would have been done by now (considering how old the technology is). Also, none of the approaches I have tried totally eliminated the unwanted noise. It may have lessened the amount, but never completely got rid of it. Just play and enjoy the buzz. :)

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Post by biliousfrog »

Had great success with dummy coils in my tele, sound hardly changed (actually improved because no hiss/hum) and it's as quiet as my Lace equipped strat.

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copachino
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Post by copachino »

biliousfrog wrote:Had great success with dummy coils in my tele, sound hardly changed (actually improved because no hiss/hum) and it's as quiet as my Lace equipped strat.
can you explain about the wire size and how many turns did you used??

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snofla1900
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Post by snofla1900 »

Had great success with dummy coils in my tele, sound hardly changed (actually improved because no hiss/hum) and it's as quiet as my Lace equipped strat.

Could you explain how you did that ? Did you use just a random pickup and connect it in paralel with the existing one in your guitar ?


Tia , Alf

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Post by biliousfrog »

copachino wrote:
biliousfrog wrote:Had great success with dummy coils in my tele, sound hardly changed (actually improved because no hiss/hum) and it's as quiet as my Lace equipped strat.
can you explain about the wire size and how many turns did you used??
It's really simple - take a single-coil pickup, remove the magnets, wire up to the pickup(s) which is causing the hum. If it doesn't cancel the noise, swap the wires.

A dummy coil is just a pickup without any magnets. You wire it up like a humbucker but, because it doesn't have a magnet, it doesn't "pick up" any sound - it just phase cancels the hum.

The important thing to remember is that it must be oriented the same as the pickup (facing the top/front of the guitar) and you might need one for each pickup if your existing ones are RWRP. The Ilitch and Suhr systems only work if all pickups are the same polarity.

My tele is wired with two dummy coils which are switched out for the middle position to retain the standard noise cancelling that the position offers. The bridge pickup's dummy coil is under the control plate, the neck pickup's is in the wiring channel under the scratchplate - for that one I completely removed the windings, wrapped them in tape and squashed them into the cavity.

Humbucker coils are smaller so make better dummies. Ideally you'd match the resistance to your existing pickups but I just threw some in and they worked. You can test it easily by taking a wire from your pickup's "hot" connection and another from the ground and running them outside the guitar - then hook up to a dummy coil, if you don't hear a difference, swap wires.

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Post by snofla1900 »

Thanks for the info , that's what I wanted to know !

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Post by biliousfrog »

I found a rough diagram with my tele's wiring and quickly made a decent copy (I should be packing for a holiday!). I wasn't sure how well I'd explained anything as it took me a bit of trial and error with the switch wiring.

I'm not quite sure how easy it would be to translate it to a strat, the confusing part is disconnecting coils for the in-between positions, otherwise you'll get hum with those. I'd be inclined to use three pickups with the same polarity and use a single dummy coil to make it easy.
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Post by snofla1900 »

This is even greater, thanks ! Have a good holiday!

Alf

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