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Post subject: Noiseless Pickups
Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 8:44 am
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Hey all, I work at a pawn shop and just acquired a MIM Strat with the Vintage Noiseless pickups installed in them from the shop. Needless to say when I plugged it in it doesn't work.

So I take it apart and put all the wires where they need to be, but now when I plug it in to an amp I get a really awful hum.

Is this just a grounding issue? What do you all think?


*EDIT* And I do apologize if this question has already been answered, somehow sifting through thousands of posts doesn't seem fun =P


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Post subject: Re: Noiseless Pickups
Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 8:59 am
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Bluesbro89 wrote:
Hey all, I work at a pawn shop and just acquired a MIM Strat with the Vintage Noiseless pickups installed in them from the shop. Needless to say when I plugged it in it doesn't work.

So I take it apart and put all the wires where they need to be, but now when I plug it in to an amp I get a really awful hum.

Is this just a grounding issue? What do you all think?


*EDIT* And I do apologize if this question has already been answered, somehow sifting through thousands of posts doesn't seem fun =P


Based on your symptom, I'd first check that the output plug is in proper working order.

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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 9:02 am
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Yes, I have it strung with one string so i can hear it working, but it's definitely the 60 cycle hum. When I'm not touching the string it hums, when I just barely touch it, it goes away.


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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 9:08 am
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Bluesbro89 wrote:
Yes, I have it strung with one string so i can hear it working, but it's definitely the 60 cycle hum. When I'm not touching the string it hums, when I just barely touch it, it goes away.


Actually, touching a string will lower hum as this is a normal phenomenon where your body helps ground the circuit. Apart from this though, your problem was that you get no sound from any of the pickups, is this correct? Also, have you verified the output plug to be in proper working order?

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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 9:13 am
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Sorry if I have been unclear. (Haven't had my coffee yet =P)

I fixed the guitar to the point where the pickups work, BUT because they are the Vintage Noiseless pickups I expected a little less hum out of them at idle.

I understand by touching the strings I am grounding the circuit with my body and reducing the hum, so do you think I just need to ground the circuit better inside the guitar?


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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 9:21 am
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The first thing I would do is check for cold solders.

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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 9:23 am
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Rgr that. I'm going back through now to re-solder all the grounds.

The guy that did the pickup replacement wasn't very neat about things, I doubt he knew how to solder correctly...

Thanks for the tip. =]


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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 9:36 am
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Bluesbro89 wrote:
Sorry if I have been unclear. (Haven't had my coffee yet =P)

I fixed the guitar to the point where the pickups work, BUT because they are the Vintage Noiseless pickups I expected a little less hum out of them at idle.

I understand by touching the strings I am grounding the circuit with my body and reducing the hum, so do you think I just need to ground the circuit better inside the guitar?


Contrary to popular belief, even with, "Noiseless", "humbuckers", "stacks", etc. or whatever you want to call them, ALL guitars with passive, high impedance pickups (meaning, non-pre-amped) hum to varying degrees. This includes your Vintage Noiseless which in fact, can and do emit noise. To what degree depends in general on the brand of pickups, the "house wiring" in the facility you are in, your proximity to computers, florescent lights, quality of your jack and amp; the list goes on and on. Oftentimes, just literally turning the guitar in a different direction will add or reduce the level of hum, believe it or not.

If all the ground wires in the guitar are already properly installed, anything else is virtually redundant and useless. Even if you chose to use conductive foil or carbon based paint to cover (shield) all the cavities, the noise level will not dramatically change, if at all. Further, unless the top of the pickups are relatively flush with the pickguard, the pickups themselves will receive no benefit from this shielding and even at this, there's no guarantee of any noteworthy results. This whole shielding business is more of a, "placebo effect" than it is a constructive reality. Here too, if one really goes berserk with all this shielding, it will ramp up the capacitance of the overall circuit which in turn, decreases the output and frequency response of the pickups. It is these sonic decreases which is what makes the guitar seem 'quieter'. Sans shielding, the same effect/result can be achieved by simply backing off the volume and tone controls ever so slightly.

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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 9:41 am
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That's really interesting. Well right now I am in the process of fixing all the cold joints, so hopefully that will reduce if not eliminate the hum. Thanks Martian and CAFeathers for your help! =]


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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 10:38 am
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Well, I fixed the cold joints, but I still have a hum. I guess I'll just have to live with it. Also on top of everything, while I was restringing it, the nut broke on me, so I'm thinking I should just give it to a professional tech and pay him to fix everything that's wrong with it, because there seems to be no end to it all! :x


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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 12:09 pm
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Bluesbro89 wrote:
Well, I fixed the cold joints, but I still have a hum. I guess I'll just have to live with it. Also on top of everything, while I was restringing it, the nut broke on me, so I'm thinking I should just give it to a professional tech and pay him to fix everything that's wrong with it, because there seems to be no end to it all! :x


Consider: The money you'd be paying a tech to bring it up to snuff would probably be dollar for dollar, the differential than if you sold it right now, as is.

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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 2:31 pm
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Martian wrote:
Bluesbro89 wrote:
Well, I fixed the cold joints, but I still have a hum. I guess I'll just have to live with it. Also on top of everything, while I was restringing it, the nut broke on me, so I'm thinking I should just give it to a professional tech and pay him to fix everything that's wrong with it, because there seems to be no end to it all! :x


Consider: The money you'd be paying a tech to bring it up to snuff would probably be dollar for dollar, the differential than if you sold it right now, as is.


At $50+/hr, you could buy a new one in a 6-10 hour repair.

-T


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Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 11:05 pm
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Oh, I know a guy Lol. He's good and he's cheap.

I only paid 100 bucks for the guitar, but I mainly just wanted the pickups, but it works out because I would have needed a guitar to put the pickups in anyways!


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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 10:43 am
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Just a quick $.02 worth here...

While as other's have stated, virtually any guitar pickup will produce "a little" hum, a good rule of thumb is to compare it with a known working guitar. If you use a regular Strat for example with traditional single coils (assuming it's wired correctly) VN pickups should be as quiet as a traditional Strat in the 2 and 4 position...if not quieter.

If you're -absolutely sure- that you have the guitar wired correctly and that all the solder joints are good, what about the amp and or the electrical of the place where you're playin' this at? I have certainly seen a few amps where a ground plug was broken off (or even disconnected inside the amp). I know there's even a few really old tube amps running around out there that were made before there were ground plugs.

Even if the guitar and the amp are both in good condition and wired correctly, doesn't mean the electrical outlets where you're pluggin' in are correct. I was recently reminded of this when I got my new Bugera amp for Xmas...I was trying to play over at my Dad's house and I had forgotten that his electrical outlets aren't actually grounded...my father recently had to have social workers from the city in the house so my brother had gone around and replaced (most of) Dad's outlets with grounded outlets to present the appearance of updated electrical...but the grounds aren't actually connected to anything inside the box (yea...I know my brother's an idiot!). Needless to say my rig hummed like the begabbers!..took me a minute or two to realize what the problem was LOL!!! Remember that just because an outlet may look grounded, doesn't mean that it actually is.

This also doesn't take any other issues in to account such as nearby fluorescent lighting, computer monitors or any other source of em interference. Before I called in a "professional", I'd eliminate the obvious first...in the words of the immortal Sherlock Holmes, "once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever is left...however improbable, must be the truth".

Just something to think about...sometimes we over-look the simplest things.

Peace,
Jim


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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 12:14 pm
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tyronne wrote:
At $50+/hr, you could buy a new one in a 6-10 hour repair.

-T


If it takes a 'tech' even half this amount of time for correcting what MAY be an abnormal hum problem and installing a new nut, I'd find a new tech in one one hundreth of this time! YMMV.

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