humbucker humming?

[ACR4V3N]

I've got a simple problem/question. After rewiring a guitar, I noticed it had a slight hum, which increased when I strummed the strings (or the pickups were picking up noise for that matter). It was a slight hum and after completely wiring it again, the hum was back again.

I decided to isolate the problem and go to the source; the humbucker itself. Its a four conductor seymour duncan (I've used this pickup only months ago in a guitar before and it worked flawlessly), so I took the bare and green, and grounded them directly to an output jack. I twisted and soldered the red and white together. Then I took the black and connected it directly to the hot output on the output jack. It still hums. I tried attaching it to a perfectly working volume pot. Just as you might of guessed, it still hums. Everything is grounded and I even went so far to take it out of the guitar and have the pickup completely on its own. This didnt help.

When I touch the bottom metal plate of the humbucker, or the metal poles that "pickup" the sound, it reduces the sound but still not as quiet as it should be. I have a perfectly fine working fender highway one with a humbucker and it makes a little sound when its picking up sound, but nothing to noticable.

I understand my amp makes noise and some hum is inevitable. Im pretty sure my amp has a noise gate and when the sound is being picked up some of the hum leaks through when the distortion is high. The amp is functioning properly. I've tried different cables also. The humbucker it just hums on its own when there is no reason for the noise gate not to suppress everything. I took an old epiphone humbucker with no problems too and attatched it to an output jack and it also hums. But like I said, I have a perfectly good working fender as a control. I DONT KNOW ANY OTHER FACTORS TO CONSIDER.

[David Schwab]

When I touch the bottom metal plate of the humbucker, or the metal poles that "pickup" the sound, it reduces the sound but still not as quiet as it should be.

I was thinking that it sounds like the metal parts of the pickup are not grounded. I think the wires on the pickup end are the problem. As a test, try running a wire from the guitar's ground to the baseplate on the pickup, and see if the noise goes away.

It could also be possible that the hot on the pickup is somehow connected to the baseplate. If that's the case the sound should go quiet when you connect the ground wire.

So it's obviously the pickup, and probably the wires from the 4-conductor cable, but on the pickup end of things. Maybe the bare wire is broken on the pickup end.