# How do you keep your single coils quiet?



## aC2rs (Jul 9, 2007)

There is a lot I like about the sound of single coil pickups but the damn 60hz buzz will never make my "must have" list.

I have an LP Special that I love - but that noise - so it rarely gets plugged in.
I really want a Tele and I'm thinking of getting back into one but...

In the past I've used noiseless pickups which don't sound quite the same as true single coils. I've shielded cavities which help a bit and have used a noise gate.

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but, how do you keep your single coils quiet for home playing?


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## 1SweetRide (Oct 25, 2016)

I don’t really get that issue. If I’m playing high gain, I bring in the noise gate. I play partly through a PA and partly through an amp so that may be why I don’t experience that to the extent you do.


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## KapnKrunch (Jul 13, 2016)

Not a problem here either. I rarely use HB's. 

Just move away from the amp. Otherwise, something is wrong. 

I dislike noise gate just because I always avoid adding anything unnecessarily to the signal chain. Probably a great tool if you have already heavily processed your signal anyway. 

Use high end gear if you can afford it, there is a reason it is expensive. Better design, better parts, better materials, better construction.


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## zdogma (Mar 21, 2006)

So I went through this a few years ago, and I’ve largely gotten past it with a few tricks. The only guitars that still bother me are P90 Gibsons, the combination of the high output single coil and no shielding is tough to control.

Krunch is right, play about 10 feet from your amp if you can, that helps a ton.

The best solution is to buy a well shielded guitar or one with a silent single coil system, like Suhr or Music Man. They work well, use normal/reals single coils, and though they arent completely noiseless, they are usually as good or better than humbuckers. From experience, my Suhr is also really well shielded from the factory, so its quite good even without the SSC.

If you have a guitar that you like the sound of but its noisy then shielding the cavities will reduce the noise by about half or a bit more, and it prevents a lot of the noise you get when you take your hand off the strings. Just get conductive copper tape from amazon, stick it all through the cavities, make sure its all electrically connected then ground it all in one place. Takes about an hour or so and it really works. For strats I’m a big fan of the full aluminum pickguard shields, I think they make a huge difference, but you have to make sure they are also grounded at the pots or contacting your copper tape or you’ll get a ground loop. Shielding the coils is a shitload of work and makes the pickups sound dark, not recommended.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

Don't Fralin and Lollar have noiseless singlecoils that still sound like themselves?


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## DaddyDog (Apr 21, 2017)

Hum cancelling pickups was my best solution. I have sets from MJS, and Seymour Duncan. On telecasters and a Gretsch.

Using the EHX Humdebugger is a close second.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

zdogma said:


> Shielding the coils is a shitload of work and makes the pickups sound dark, not recommended.


I found it to be the opposite.
Mind you, I've only done this on the J pups of two of my basses.

How to Shield Single-Coil Pickups


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## zdogma (Mar 21, 2006)

Budda said:


> Don't Fralin and Lollar have noiseless singlecoils that still sound like themselves?


Sort of. I’ve tried Fralin, Joe Barden, Kinman, SD and they are all decent approximations of single coil pickups. I haven’t found one that gets it exactly right. Mostly they lack dynamics or they are a bit darker, Kinmans were probably the closest, Joe Barden/JBE were the best with high gain, and quietest.


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## knight_yyz (Mar 14, 2015)

I spent a fortune on Lindy Fralin p90 noiseless set. i don't like them They are dead quiet. Even quieter than my Greco humbuckers. A P90 without the hum is missing some mojo....


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## zdogma (Mar 21, 2006)

laristotle said:


> I found it to be the opposite.
> Mind you, I've only done this on the J pups of two of my basses.
> 
> How to Shield Single-Coil Pickups


Never tried it on bass, I can see that working better.

I did it on a Strat a few years back, thought it would be easier than shielding the cavities. In the end it didn’t reduce the noise very much and made the pickups darker (as I recall, it was a while ago) The issue with the strat (I think) is all that cloth covered wire that is under the pick guard. All of the low noise Strat pickups like Kinman use shielded wire with a ground, I think that’s a big part of the noise reduction.


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## mrmatt1972 (Apr 3, 2008)

I use my volume knob...


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## Granny Gremlin (Jun 3, 2016)

laristotle said:


> I found it to be the opposite.
> Mind you, I've only done this on the J pups of two of my basses.
> 
> How to Shield Single-Coil Pickups


Huh. I always figured that this would affect the pup. When you say 'the opposite' do you mean it makes them brighter (vs darker as suggested)? 

But great idea if not - also if just 1 or 2 pups may be easier than sheilding the cavity (on a strat I say sheild the cavity ), but the advantage of sheilding the whole cavity would be that the unbalanced signal going throuh all those wires/pots etc is also sheilded - you can pick up a lot of RF/EMI from the general wiring in there even with a humbucker equiped guitar.


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## aC2rs (Jul 9, 2007)

laristotle said:


> I found it to be the opposite.
> Mind you, I've only done this on the J pups of two of my basses.
> 
> How to Shield Single-Coil Pickups


Thanks Laristotle.
This should be easy enough to do, I will start with this and see how it works 
(I will shield the cavities at the same time.)


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## loudtubeamps (Feb 2, 2012)

When you think about the pickup and the most sensitive part of the p.u.,it's not the windings of the coil or the leads, it's the pole pieces. Do you notice how quiet the neck pup is on a tele compared to the bridge? The reason....the pole pieces are shielded and the shield/cover is grounded. I remember the super humbuckers on the gibson L6S...a complete cover, no pole pieces/screws exposed.I have been a strat player most of my life. I figured out along time ago an easy way to keep the single coils quiet without compromising tonal quality. I am able to sit near my amp or computer for recording purposes and not be too concerned with pickup orientation to the device causing rf-emf. Try it for yourself: Take a piece of copper foil used for cavity shielding with the paper backing attached, solder a length of flexible stranded wire to a corner and clip lead the wire to a ground source, the bridge, the jack sleeve cover, whatever. Strum and observe any tonal change when you pass the foil under the strings , over the pup covering the pole pieces. My method involves a piece of electrical tape, covering just the pole pieces to insulate them from the copper foil, then I completely wrap the pickup in the foil and solder a wire from the foil to the nearest ground point.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

Granny Gremlin said:


> When you say 'the opposite'


It was easy to do and I found no difference in sound quality, minus the hum.


aC2rs said:


> I will shield the cavities at the same time


Do the pups first, then test.
Shielding the cavities is time consuming. For me it was.


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

loudtubeamps said:


> I completely wrap the pickup in the foil and solder a wire from the foil to the nearest ground point.


From the article that I linked explaining why that's not a good idea

_*Note:* Be sure the gap isn’t right where the pickup’s two wires are attached, because in the next step, we’ll need that space to connect the copper wrap to ground. Otherwise, it’s not important where the gap is or how wide it is. I like to place the gap on the opposite side of the pickup from where its two wires are attached.

Why is this little gap so important? If you close the copper-tape wrap so the two ends make contact, the loss of all high end is unavoidable. You’ll often read this is because the capacitance of the pickup’s winding increases against ground. While this is electrically true, it is not the reason for the loss of high end. The real reason for the high-end loss are eddy currents in the metal film, which act like a shading coil in a transformer. The gap breaks the eddy currents and the loss of high end is minimal—and in most cases, not even audible.








_


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## NashvilleDeluxe (Feb 7, 2018)

Excellent advice above about the copper/aluminum faraday cage shielding.

To the wiring: as per Lindy Fralin, use your volume pot as a "star ground", meaning all pickups PLUS the bridge get a ground wire to a solder lug on the volume (which I prefer to connecting to the springs on a Strat). From there, one ground wire from volume to the output jack. If you have any "jumper" connections (usually stiff bare wire going from pot to pot), those are big offenders, and unnecessary. Metal pickup covers on Telecaster neck pickups can often be made quiet with contact to the copper shielding in the cavity. Longer runs often benefit from shielded wire.

I do shielding work with the guitar plugged into an amp with a bit of gain, but at low volume. You can hear if certain work makes no difference, shorts the circuit out, or improves the hum. If I have to assemble/disassemble frequently, it's time-consuming, and I'm making no money. Sometimes it's a bad solder joint, a switch/pot on the fritz or "noisy" unshielded wires, so even when you've done dozens of these, there is still an element of hunting down the buzz that happens.
Will @la grange guitar workshop (FB).


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## loudtubeamps (Feb 2, 2012)

laristotle said:


> From the article that I linked explaining why that's not a good idea
> 
> _*Note:* Be sure the gap isn’t right where the pickup’s two wires are attached, because in the next step, we’ll need that space to connect the copper wrap to ground. Otherwise, it’s not important where the gap is or how wide it is. I like to place the gap on the opposite side of the pickup from where its two wires are attached.
> 
> ...


All that I am suggesting is that you conduct your own simple experiment and judge for yourself. If you find the shielding technique that I use detrimental then absolutely, do what works best for you. cheers...


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## loudtubeamps (Feb 2, 2012)

some examples here: Guitars by loudtubeamps


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## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

loudtubeamps said:


> If you find the shielding technique that I use detrimental then absolutely, do what works best for you.


Not implying that you're wrong, but, you may be, according to the article.
I did your method on my Squier PJ before encountering the article (fully wrap the pup).
I didn't cover the magnets, but instead, cut the foil so as not to touch the magnets.


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## Granny Gremlin (Jun 3, 2016)

laristotle said:


> From the article that I linked explaining why that's not a good idea
> 
> _*Note:* Be sure the gap isn’t right where the pickup’s two wires are attached, because in the next step, we’ll need that space to connect the copper wrap to ground. Otherwise, it’s not important where the gap is or how wide it is. I like to place the gap on the opposite side of the pickup from where its two wires are attached.
> 
> ...


There we go - that's the important detail we were missing: the gap.


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## knight_yyz (Mar 14, 2015)

A Faraday Cage has 6 sides. it doesn't work as well when 2 sides have no protection. 

The only difference I see of wrapping the cavity vs wrapping the coil is about 5mm. IE the gap between the coil and the cavity wall is not going to make any difference. If you put a 4x4x4 radio in a 6x6x6 faraday cage or a 12x12x12 faraday cage , neither radio will have reception. One isn't better than the other. The gap has no bearing on the effectiveness of the cage. And the cage does need 6 side, not 4 like a wrapped coil. Interference is leaking through the bobbins

When you wrap the cavity you have 5 sides covered. Put an aluminum shield on the pickguard and you have all 6 covered as long as the aluminum and copper are touching


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## BEACHBUM (Sep 21, 2010)

Not a noise gate. High gain users may not benefit as much but for my clean to edge of breakup stuff (Blues, Country etc) it's excellent.


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## vokey design (Oct 24, 2006)




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## NashvilleDeluxe (Feb 7, 2018)

vokey design said:


>


I have found conductive paint more trouble than it's worth. Large quantities, once opened, don't store well. On a new build it could be a good option. Doing a foil shielding job, you shouldn't have to "gut" the whole thing, but the paint would make quite a mess if you didn't.


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## aC2rs (Jul 9, 2007)

Thanks for the replies. 
I started the shielding project on Saturday but something else came up and didn't finish it. Hopefully I will get back to it tonight.


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## player99 (Sep 5, 2019)

The Rocktron Guitar Silencer help a lot.


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## Merlin (Feb 23, 2009)

I have EMGs in my Strat, a blade style SC sized HB in my tele, and an EHX Hum Debugger for all other uses.


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## tomee2 (Feb 27, 2017)

Sheilding is well covered...but there's also these things:
Watch out for dimmer switch lights, and florescent fixtures. Even a CFL bulb can cause noise and buzz.
Use a good instrument cable. I had a cheap guitar cable that always buzzed. It was just 2 wires with no shield and probably not twisted.
(And it wasn't speaker cable-it came with one of those starter packs so it was intended to go from the guitar to the practice amp. )


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## Granny Gremlin (Jun 3, 2016)

tomee2 said:


> I had a cheap guitar cable that always buzzed. It was just 2 wires with no shield and probably not twisted.


That was probably speaker cable then, not instrument. ALL instrument cable is (or should be) single conductor coax - but yes, to your point some cheaper cable has spotty shield coverage. 

Also if the wires were twisted that actually might be worse for single ended guitar signal (vs balanced mic/line).


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## RBlakeney (Mar 12, 2017)

I threaten mine with violence.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Guitar hum can come from multiple sources, which include the pickups and the wiring. Shielding the various cavities does nothing for what the pickups themselves contribute. While cavity shielding can be helpful, if one has shielded cable running from the pickups to the controls, all that copper foil becomes largely superfluous. From my perspective, cavity-shielding only becomes helpful if one insists on using "period correct" unshielded wiring. If you run shielded cable from pickup to controls and shield any audio paths inside the control cavity, you're likely as safe as one can be.

Hum is not just a function of whether the pickup uses one or two coils. The nature of the magnetic field and pickup inductance is also important. My own experience with P90s is that they are more sensitive to 60hz hum than Strat PUs. You will note that Fender Lace pickups are single coil, but since the structure of those pickups brings the pole at the bottom of the polepiece up and around the sides, shrinking the sensing area and reducing the hum substantially, despite lacking a second coil.

Dummy coils can also work wonders. A dummy coil lacks any magnet, such that it senses hum, but not audio signal. A standard HB pickup is sort of a single-coil-plus-dummy, except that the "dummy" also senses strings. I've installed a few dummies to good effect. Ideally, a dummy coil should sense the exact same level of hum as the working pickup to provide maximum cancellation. Placing a dummy close to the sensing pickup optimizes this. If I've understood the Kinman patent correctly, his noiseless single coils are a sort of stacked humbucker, with the lower coil being more like a dummy than sensing pickup.

Dummy coils don't have to be anywhere in particular, though, to reduce hum. For instance, I installed a dummy coil in the control cavity of a guy's Tele. It wasn't a quiet as a HB, but it was a LOT quieter, and something the owner could easily live with. The Suhr backplate system has a dummy coil wound on the plastic backplate covering the vibrato system, such that it almost surrounds all 3 pickups. I saw a demonstration of one that was properly set up some years ago at the former Montreal Guitar Expo. I could hold the guitar right up against the side of the amp head with the power transformer, and dime the volume, and still hear no hum.

Dummy coils are not something one has to use _instead of_ shielding, or various noise-reduction devices. They can be used in combination to complement each other. So, for instance, if hum can be reduced (but not eliminated) by something in the guitar itself, then threshold of any gates or downward expanders can be set low enough that they only affect true noise, with negligible impact on attack or decay of softly-picked notes. My own bias is that people tend to find sources of complaint with gates and such when they expect them to do ALL the heavy lifting, vis-a-vis noise. Divvy up the burden, and you'll be more pleased with the results.


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## cboutilier (Jan 12, 2016)

I never worry about it live. I've never had it bad enough to care. On a real bad night I'll mute the chain with my tuner between songs. 

In the studio it's a PITA, but I despise noiseless pickups. Recently I had to scrap a take because my pickups were noisy, and my phaser took that noise for a ride. When I re-recorded it, I used less gain to keep the noise down and added the phaser back in post-production.


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## DavidP (Mar 7, 2006)

I use a SD Vintage Stack in my main gigging Tele, not the same as a true s/c but IMHO, in a band volume/mix it doesn't make that big a difference losing a bit of the top end. I also like the Area T 615 as it retains the twang. A good noise gate (I like the TC Electronic Sentry which allows you to focus on the gain pedals in the chain) is also your friend.


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## cbg1 (Mar 27, 2012)

i went the active pick up route ..... a set of reflex reds in my strat and emg's in my parts caster strat.... was thinking about going back to the passives.... this thread is reminding me why i made the switch to active pickups


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## Granny Gremlin (Jun 3, 2016)

mhammer said:


> Dummy coils can also work wonders. A dummy coil lacks any magnet, such that it senses hum, but not audio signal. A standard HB pickup is sort of a single-coil-plus-dummy, except that the "dummy" also senses strings. I've installed a few dummies to good effect. Ideally, a dummy coil should sense the exact same level of hum as the working pickup to provide maximum cancellation. Placing a dummy close to the sensing pickup optimizes this. If I've understood the Kinman patent correctly, his noiseless single coils are a sort of stacked humbucker, with the lower coil being more like a dummy than sensing pickup.


Alembic did the remote dummy coil thing (between the bridge and neck pups, vs control cavity so it's almost there, and a good compromise vs colocated coils for each pickup). I've also seen it where it was mounted from the rear so you can't see it like on Alembics but I forget who did that - may have been a custom one off by a forum member on another forum actually.










Stacked humbuckers are even quieter due to colocation with the pickup coil as you mentioned - Gibson did that with their LoZ pickups. There's a bunch of Strat replacement pups that do that as well (regular HiZ).


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Dummy coils are not a perfect solution, but then neither is cavity shielding. For me the goal is not hum _elimination_ so much as hum _reduction, _elimination being the best form of reduction. 

If you have some cheap Asian ceramic magnet pickups, take the magnet off and try wiring the inactive pickup in parallel with your other pickups, with the phase reversed, to see if a dummy might do what you need doing.


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## aC2rs (Jul 9, 2007)

RBlakeney said:


> I threaten mine with violence.


I've been there and done that, but, sadly without the desired outcome. 
Now I'm working on different solutions.


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## sambonee (Dec 20, 2007)

Rotate while standing. yoill find the one spot that there’s 80% less hum. Step 2: Stop there and don’t move lol.


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## player99 (Sep 5, 2019)

mhammer said:


> Guitar hum can come from multiple sources, which include the pickups and the wiring. Shielding the various cavities does nothing for what the pickups themselves contribute. While cavity shielding can be helpful, if one has shielded cable running from the pickups to the controls, all that copper foil becomes largely superfluous. From my perspective, cavity-shielding only becomes helpful if one insists on using "period correct" unshielded wiring. If you run shielded cable from pickup to controls and shield any audio paths inside the control cavity, you're likely as safe as one can be.
> 
> Hum is not just a function of whether the pickup uses one or two coils. The nature of the magnetic field and pickup inductance is also important. My own experience with P90s is that they are more sensitive to 60hz hum than Strat PUs. You will note that Fender Lace pickups are single coil, but since the structure of those pickups brings the pole at the bottom of the polepiece up and around the sides, shrinking the sensing area and reducing the hum substantially, despite lacking a second coil.
> 
> ...


Do you know how to make the Suhr backplate? I don't think they make them anymore.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I have the patent document for it somewhere, that details the construction. It involves "tuning" an onboard circuit for maximum cancellation, since it doesn't anticipate any specific pickups. The fact that it needs to be tuned by someone who knows what they're doing may be why it isn't made anymore. On the other hand, as I said earlier, any hum reduction is welcomed, even if it isn't complete cancellation. One of these days I should experiment with something on a backplate and see what I can achieve. If I get lucky, I'll let you know.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

@Fox Rox has a backplate system in a Strat that was purchased aftermarket. Possibly he will comment on the details.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

sambonee said:


> Rotate while standing. you'll find the one spot that there’s 80% less hum. Step 2: Stop there and don’t move lol.


And the same is true of dummy coils. You have to think of pickups and dummy coils as being antennae that pick up this one station really really well. CKHM, Hum-radio, 60hz on your dial. And, like any radio, moving the antenna around gets you better and worse reception. If you don't have any sort of on-board hum-cancelling stuff, then you want to move the antennae around to get _worse_ reception of that "station". If you do have some sort of hum-cancelling stuff on board then you want to orient yourself to get equivalent reception in the various coils whose combination yields cancellation.

The transition from CRTs to LED monitors, and from incandescent and fluorescent bulbs to LED lighting has been a godsend with respect to hum. I would hope that most club owners have made the changeover to LED stage lighting by this point.


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## zdogma (Mar 21, 2006)

Suhr still uses them on most of their single coil guitars, they just don’t sell them anymore. They can be a pain to retrofit, since they don’t work properly on RPRW middle pickup guitars. They’re still sold by Ilitch in the states, they are the company that created the technology for Suhr, and their product has a wiring scheme that allows you to run RPRW pickups, though the setup looks complex.

https://www.ilitchelectronics.com/


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

zdogma said:


> ....sold by Ilitch....


Thanks. This is what I was referring to in Post #42 above.


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## cbg1 (Mar 27, 2012)

zdogma said:


> Suhr still uses them on most of their single coil guitars, they just don’t sell them anymore. They can be a pain to retrofit, since they don’t work properly on RPRW middle pickup guitars. They’re still sold by Ilitch in the states, they are the company that created the technology for Suhr, and their product has a wiring scheme that allows you to run RPRW pickups, though the setup looks complex.
> 
> https://www.ilitchelectronics.com/


this is why i love this place .... always something to learn...thanks for sharing


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## Fox Rox (Aug 9, 2009)

greco said:


> @Fox Rox has a backplate system in a Strat that was purchased aftermarket. Possibly he will comment on the details.


I bought an Ilitch backplate used and paired it with a set of Lollar Tweeds that I loved. The pickups still sound great but now there is no hum.


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## gtrguy (Jul 6, 2006)

cboutilier said:


> I never worry about it live. I've never had it bad enough to care. On a real bad night I'll mute the chain with my tuner between songs.


Same, I play vintage style strats almost exclusively and the hum live has never really been an issue, even with a Gaines up JCM800. Roll the volume down between songs or flip to the hum cancelling position on the 5-way on the guitars that are RWRP. I’ve had guitars with EMG and Lace Sensor pickups but never liked the tone enough to keep them.


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## player99 (Sep 5, 2019)

mhammer said:


> And the same is true of dummy coils. You have to think of pickups and dummy coils as being antennae that pick up this one station really really well. CKHM, Hum-radio, 60hz on your dial. And, like any radio, moving the antenna around gets you better and worse reception. If you don't have any sort of on-board hum-cancelling stuff, then you want to move the antennae around to get _worse_ reception of that "station". If you do have some sort of hum-cancelling stuff on board then you want to orient yourself to get equivalent reception in the various coils whose combination yields cancellation.
> 
> The transition from CRTs to LED monitors, and from incandescent and fluorescent bulbs to LED lighting has been a godsend with respect to hum. I would hope that most club owners have made the changeover to LED stage lighting by this point.


I bought LED bulbs that hum (fm radio) really bad. I cannot use my radio around them (10'+).


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## loudtubeamps (Feb 2, 2012)

mhammer said:


> Guitar hum can come from multiple sources, which include the pickups and the wiring. Shielding the various cavities does nothing for what the pickups themselves contribute. While cavity shielding can be helpful, if one has shielded cable running from the pickups to the controls, all that copper foil becomes largely superfluous. From my perspective, cavity-shielding only becomes helpful if one insists on using "period correct" unshielded wiring. If you run shielded cable from pickup to controls and shield any audio paths inside the control cavity, you're likely as safe as one can be.
> 
> Hum is not just a function of whether the pickup uses one or two coils. The nature of the magnetic field and pickup inductance is also important. My own experience with P90s is that they are more sensitive to 60hz hum than Strat PUs. You will note that Fender Lace pickups are single coil, but since the structure of those pickups brings the pole at the bottom of the polepiece up and around the sides, shrinking the sensing area and reducing the hum substantially, despite lacking a second coil.
> 
> ...


Here's a question that mhammer may be able to shed some light on. First: I believe that any shielding properly done can help to reduce unwanted rfi /emf interference..it's all good. To pick up (pardon the pun) on your first paragraph.Q:If cavity shielding is such a big part of reducing unwanted noise, why didn't Leo adopt Gibson's approach of using shielded pickup leads and metal covers over the pickup selector switch and potentiometers on the early Fenders?


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## loudtubeamps (Feb 2, 2012)

laristotle said:


> From the article that I linked explaining why that's not a good idea
> 
> _*Note:* Be sure the gap isn’t right where the pickup’s two wires are attached, because in the next step, we’ll need that space to connect the copper wrap to ground. Otherwise, it’s not important where the gap is or how wide it is. I like to place the gap on the opposite side of the pickup from where its two wires are attached.
> 
> ...


If high frequency loss as the article would lead one to believe is a given (having the entire pickup is enclosed and shielded) how does one explain the performance from those pickups that are? 
Case in point: As I mentioned earlier, the neck pup on tele's, lipstick's, DeArmond's, Gibson Firebird pup's and the Gibson/ Bill Lawrence super humbucker?


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

loudtubeamps said:


> Here's a question that mhammer may be able to shed some light on. First: I believe that any shielding properly done can help to reduce unwanted rfi /emf interference..it's all good. To pick up (pardon the pun) on your first paragraph.Q:If cavity shielding is such a big part of reducing unwanted noise, why didn't Leo adopt Gibson's approach of using shielded pickup leads and metal covers over the pickup selector switch and potentiometers on the early Fenders?


You ask a good and fair question. I am certainly no authority on the matter, but I think it bears consideration of how gear would have been used at the time. Few, if any, players were diming their amps, and certainly nobody was sticking a drive pedal between guitar and amp that would goose any incoming hum and noise by 40db. If one uses a 5-15W amp at reasonable volume level, with no intervening pedals, and manages to find a spot on the stage where you can sit through a few sets without incurring hum from any nearby appliances or lighting fixtures, then hum is not an issue and Leo would have done a terrific job.

Why was it not changed since then, as hum became more of an issue? Well, there is a great deal that has not been changed since the earliest days, simply because of the sheer dead weight of precedent. E.g., when was the last time you or anyone else switched to the bridge pickup on a Les Paul or SG for a dull muted tone? And yet, since almost 70 years ago, Gibson used the exact same tone-cap value for bridge and neck pickups, even though a smaller value is called for to yield useful tone adjustment at the bridge.

And yet, Gibson used shielded cable for connecting things, despite the fact that they also used hum-rejecting pickups (though not on all guitars). Why? The path from pickups to control-plate on a Tele is a mere fraction of the distance between pickups and controls, compared to a Les Paul. The location of the pickup selector on many Gibsons and also Gretsch guitars requires 6-8x the length of connecting wire, easily, making it prey to stray hum sources, even if the pickups are not contributing. And if one of your selling points is "no hum", then you're probably motivated to make good on that promise. Telling a customer "It's not coming from the pickups" is unlikely to placate anyone.

Hum is really more of an issue for contemporary playing contexts. I have a pet theory that the original MXR Distortion+ may have initially used a gain control that reduced bottom end as it was turned up by mere happenstance, but stuck with it because it wouldn't amplify and exaggerate hum typical of SC guitars of the time.

Mark


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## NashvilleDeluxe (Feb 7, 2018)

I just de-hummed a Stratocaster and a Telecaster this morning. The Strat was straight-ahead and predictable, and just needed some cavity foil in contact with the pickguard foil, and I re-routed the bridge ground wire from the tremolo to the volume pot. Quiet, and no change in tone. Spanky/clucky fun.

The Telecaster...sheesh. It's a Mexican 50th anniversary, and definitely not grounded typically. First, it has (had) the "modern" wiring configuration Mod Garage: Three Ways to Wire a Tone Pot. The capacitor is connected to the output (wiper) of the tone pot. I dislike that for a number of reasons, so I solder it to the ground lug on the tone pot instead. There was an immediate improvement in hum, even with the control plate removed and on the bench. 

Next, each of the two pickups had ground lugs screwed to the cavity of the guitar, (which had paint-on cavity shielding), instead of a longer runs of wire grounding on the volume pot. Once soldered to the volume pot, Mr. Tele got very quiet. I went ahead and copper-shielded the cavity anyway, and made sure there was contact between the cavity and the pickguard. Slapped it all back together, and it's dead quiet. That said, if you get 6 inches away from an amp with the gain cranked, you can hear tiny frequencies from the pole pieces. It would be pretty sterile-sounding if you shielded that out. 

Back to work...


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## loudtubeamps (Feb 2, 2012)

mhammer said:


> You ask a good and fair question. I am certainly no authority on the matter, but I think it bears consideration of how gear would have been used at the time. Few, if any, players were diming their amps, and certainly nobody was sticking a drive pedal between guitar and amp that would goose any incoming hum and noise by 40db. If one uses a 5-15W amp at reasonable volume level, with no intervening pedals, and manages to find a spot on the stage where you can sit through a few sets without incurring hum from any nearby appliances or lighting fixtures, then hum is not an issue and Leo would have done a terrific job.
> 
> Why was it not changed since then, as hum became more of an issue? Well, there is a great deal that has not been changed since the earliest days, simply because of the sheer dead weight of precedent. E.g., when was the last time you or anyone else switched to the bridge pickup on a Les Paul or SG for a dull muted tone? And yet, since almost 70 years ago, Gibson used the exact same tone-cap value for bridge and neck pickups, even though a smaller value is called for to yield useful tone adjustment at the bridge.
> 
> Hum is really more of an issue for contemporary playing contexts. I have a pet theory that the original MXR Distortion+ may have initially used a gain control that reduced bottom end as it was turned up by mere happenstance, but stuck with it because it wouldn't amplify and exaggerate hum typical of SC guitars of the time.


 Thanks for the response mhammer... yeah...My thought is that the effort to shield the way Gibson did was not cost effective/efficient given the end result.Guess, what I'm getting at is the fact that cavity shielding offers only minimal results in reducing unwanted noise, the business end of the pup is the big culprit. I took the (total shield) aka:tele neck,lipstick tube approach years ago with favourable results,not the be all-end all fix but a drastic improvement. Cheers...


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

With so many broadcast sources doing things digitally, I guess we're not as likely to pick up radio or TV stations on our gear, as we might have in 1970.

I've made a dozen or more pedals in plastic enclosures. For shielding, I cut out a piece of copper shim to place against the underside of the top of the enclosure. All pots are grounded against the copper shim, and the shim is tied to the circuit and power-supply ground. Even though I have not shielded the entire enclosure, as might happen with a cast aluminum box, I don't experience hum, because hum sources generally come from above.

Guitars, on the other hand, are subject to all manner of orientations with respect to EMI sources. If we always sat still, then the placement of some metal foil on the underside of the pickguard might be enough. But since we move around, and EMI sources can come from everywhere, cavity shielding is not a _terrible_ idea. If one uses shielded cable throughout, though, it's gilding the lily.


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## aC2rs (Jul 9, 2007)

So, I went out and bought a new Telecaster the day I posted this question and didn't get around to messing with the Special until yesterday.

I wrapped and grounded the pickups according to the article posted earlier in the thread and - zero difference.
I can't really be bothered to do a full shielding on the guitar so I will leave it as is - or I can just play it in the sweet spot where the noise goes away - upside down and backwards

As an aside the 60hz hum on the Tele is a fraction of the P90s in the Special and has been a non-issue for me.


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## KapnKrunch (Jul 13, 2016)

Maybe if you wear a tinfoil hat you can't hear it.


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## Markus 1 (Feb 1, 2019)

sambonee said:


> Rotate while standing. yoill find the one spot that there’s 80% less hum. Step 2: Stop there and don’t move lol.



Yeah boy.... I have watched you rotate while playing and it's fetchin' I tell ya 
Downright sexy


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## Doug Gifford (Jun 8, 2019)

What a great thread. My tele doesn't have major hum issues and I can usually fix it by rotating until it fades down. Then I stop. Just rotating until your cord pulls out of the amp is also effective but carries a cost in guitar volume.

I do recall a gig at the Churchill Arms as special. I was playing a tele that I'd built from parts but the big problem was a neon "Open" sign immediately behind the stage. Needless to say, they couldn't turn off the sign. I had to turn down the volume between songs. During the songs it was huge.


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## beej (Mar 20, 2017)

Dummy coils are great, except for the way they load your pickups. (Why people complain about being robbed of high end.) 

The Music Man approach is good- you can do this yourself. Instead of wiring the dummy coil to your pickups, wire it to a small buffer (either make one or get something tiny- AMZ FX make a tiny one) so it's isolated. With the output wired out-of-phase to the ground of your pickup, you'll get noise cancellation but no loading effect.

You can actually buy the MM Silent Circuit now- it's an all-in-one device and has outputs that are out of phase. Pretty handy- you can use them to quiet noisy single coils, for coil splits, etc.


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## Mateo2006 (May 31, 2015)

zdogma said:


> The best solution is to buy a well shielded guitar or one with a silent single coil system, like Suhr or Music Man. They work well, use normal/reals single coils, and though they arent completely noiseless, they are usually as good or better than humbuckers. From experience, my Suhr is also really well shielded from the factory, so its quite good even without the SSC.


This is a widely held consensus, I think. 

Ilitch was the company that developed this for Suhr, I believe. I was surprised to find that they also have solutions for gibson style instruments:
CVNCS IN LP S60T
This might be the ticket. It isn't a budget solution of course.

My Lollar CC pickup are in the same ballpark for output as p90s. They buzz. Under controlled circumstances nothing I can't handle with position of the guitar in relation to the amp. I can usually find a good angle.

I do use the black shielding paint in the cavities of the instrument.

After decades of tube amping, in the last few years I have shifted over to using a Kemper with profiles of my favourite amps. Although in the first year I used the Kemper, I couldn't give up my wah, compressor, Klon-clone, Timmy and a spring reverb pedal. In recent years, I fine tuned the profiles so I just hit an adjusted profile rather than hitting an outboard pedal. I think that has had a big effect on reducing noise into the signal path.

My Vox wah was definitely a weak link in allowing noise into the signal path. One day I even got radio signals coming through it. I thought I was having a religious experience! 

Now there is nothing in my signal path and using the onboard Kemper stuff (wahs/compressors/overdrives/gates) doesn't introduce a bad tube, a dying battery, cable lengths and noise or discernible changes in the signal. Kemper improved its reverbs and I improved my ability to use them and tweaking the profiles to get sounds that, although not identical to what the pedals offered, I like.

A nice clean signal path simplifies the introduction of noise that using single coils seems to further accentuate. 

_That is until I have something noisy plugged into the same AC unit as my amp._

Last week, the girlfriend plugged the printer into the same extension as my amp and I started losing my mind wondering where all this noise was coming from!  That was in a controllable home environment. In a gig, that neon sign the club is running is going to give you problems.

My point is that it is good to focus on reducing the introduction of noise in your whole signal path as well as dealing with it at the guitar level if you are going to continue your love affair with single coils. - especially p90s. You probably won't go to a profiling amp but you can also make sure you have a clean power source and simplify your signal chain.

But I, for one, am not willing to give up the Charlie Christians for EMGs yet. 

And I do hear those Lollar 50s wind p-90s calling my name.


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## Mateo2006 (May 31, 2015)

zdogma said:


> Sort of. I’ve tried Fralin, Joe Barden, Kinman, SD and they are all decent approximations of single coil pickups. I haven’t found one that gets it exactly right. Mostly they lack dynamics or they are a bit darker, Kinmans were probably the closest, Joe Barden/JBE were the best with high gain, and quietest.


I have a steinberger H-S-H guitar, I switched out the middle pickup out for a Dimarzio Area 61.

Now I find that I never use that position. 

When SD first came out with the stacked humbucker in the early 1980s I installed one in the neck and a SSL-1 in the middle position.

The next week I put an SSL-1 in the neck as well.

...And I never prefer the middle position on a strat to the neck.

If you asked me, "Do those pickups sound good?", I'd say they sound alright. But head to head with a real singlecoil there is no question that they sound different.

Whether you like that sound or not is a different question.

For highly overdriven sounds they might be better. Eric Johnson seems to like using a clipped one in his bridge position.

For clean sounds I believe they have less high end nuance.


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## Mateo2006 (May 31, 2015)

knight_yyz said:


> I spent a fortune on Lindy Fralin p90 noiseless set. i don't like them They are dead quiet.


This my favourite post on this thread.

That is the effect that stacked (or, in this case, I guess the Fralin's are actually split) single-coils pickups have on many people.

Good pickups. Quiet. I don't like them. 

It is funny. I can think of examples of people using these pickups that get great sounds on record. Live I think nobody in the audience notices either.

But playing alone in the room, clean, you _definitely_ know the difference.

Much of Larry Carlton's "Sleep Walk" album was recorded with an EMG equipped Valley Arts strat. I love the guitar sounds on that album (There are humbuckers on some tracks too). 

Those are the quietest pickups on the planet. They make humbuckers sound noisy. 

But even testing a guitar out in a shop, I hated the edge that EMGs put on the front of the note.

Even if nobody else cares, if _you_ do, then it matters.


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## troyhead (May 23, 2014)

Mateo2006 said:


> make sure you have a clean power source


I bought a fancy power conditioner to try and help with this problem as my home seems to have a lot of stuff that makes guitars buzz (even humbuckers hum a noticeable amount, but not as much as single coils). It did nothing, so I returned it.


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## iamthehub (Sep 21, 2016)

I have been using the Electro-Harmonix Hum Debugger for about 2 yrs and have found it works great at removing the hum on my P90s and single coils. 











Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## 31206 (Oct 11, 2018)

-Good shielding paint in cavities and under pickguard can reduce most undesirable. ( i cant imagine taking the time to use copper tape.)
-Dummy coil is another option but can be pricey depending the choice.
-EHX hum debugger.


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## aC2rs (Jul 9, 2007)

A couple of weeks back I revisited shielding my LP Special.
As I previously mentioned shielding the coils on the pickups only made zero difference and I removed it.

This time I shielded the pickup covers themselves as well as the back and lower sides of the pickup cavities. (There wasn't enough clearance between the pickups and the cavities to completely shield the cavities.)

And a result. OK the guitar isn't exactly quiet now, but, I can live with it.
The noise levels have dropped noticeably, and what was a very narrow "quiet zone" angle has increased.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

I mostly use hum buckers, if I am playing single coils that would be my Mustang--or a single coil option on my Les Paul copy- (P-=Rail & JB--both wired for split coils)

I have't had much of an issue with either--but I believe that has to do with the way they're wired. (At least in part)


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## amesburymc (May 14, 2006)

I used to have Fender Deluxe Strat, which had N3 noiseless pickups. It was definitely the quietest despite being the only single coil guitar I had. However I didn’t like the tone, got rid of it, and got Fender Rarities Strat equipped with Custom Shop pickups. It definitely has some noise but I just stay away from the amp and that eliminates most of the noise issue. The noise becomes bit more annoying when I put OD in front of the amp but again just reasonable distance from the amp reduces the noise mostly or a good noise gate to shut down the noise completely.


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## bluehugh2 (Mar 10, 2006)

Here’s a couple of pictures of my install of the Ilitch NCS (noise cancelling system) ... which was licensed to SUHR for a while. There are a couple of models of the backplate system depending on the output of your pickups... here are 2 pics in mid-install. The blue pcb has 2 adjustment pots... 1 for the bridge pickup and 1 for the neck/middle. You can’t have a rwrp middle pickup - (although there is a “work around”). Once the pcb pots are adjusted for maximum noise reduction, you tuck them into the control cavity. The system came fast to my door, the instructions were clear, and it is probably the best at not changing your tone but reducing 60 cycle hum. You’ll need to be able to solder, and having some different sizes of shrink tubing is very handy. “Your mission, should you decide to accept it...”


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## warplanegrey (Jan 3, 2007)

I use humbuckers 80% of the time. The other 20% are with my Tele with G&L MFDs. I play generally pretty gainy and I typically don’t notice the hum. That said, I don’t play too close to my amp and once I start playing, I don’t even hear the hum. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


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## AJ6stringsting (Mar 12, 2006)

I love the Bill Lawrence L250 pickups ..... Has more bass than a standard single coil, no hum and it's a very versatile pickup .

The L250 sound great in the neck position on my Heavy Metal guitars.


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## BEACHBUM (Sep 21, 2010)

With 15 guitars I don't have the time or the inclination to physically silence all of them so I'm also a fan of this one.


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## mrfiftyfour (Jun 29, 2008)

No pic.
What is it?


BEACHBUM said:


> With 15 guitars I don't have the time or the inclination to physically silence all of them so I'm also a fan of this one.


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## BEACHBUM (Sep 21, 2010)

mrfiftyfour said:


> No pic.
> What is it?


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## mrfiftyfour (Jun 29, 2008)

Where do you place the Humdebugger in your signal chain?
Does it matter?
Does it work the same if it's in the amp's effect loop?


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## BEACHBUM (Sep 21, 2010)

^^I don't use pedals so I'm content with putting it second in line right after the tuner however it does do a good job in silencing noisy pedals as well so in that case I guess you'd want to put it right after any pedals that are problematic.


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## dr_funkenstein (Feb 21, 2017)

There was a guy that explained the illitch system and made a diy version. The parts it is composed of are super cheap. The hard thing is creating the backplate or pickguard to house it. One guy dug a channel into the wood on his telecaster. I think ilitch would sell way more of these if they made the price about half what it is.


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