A look inside a Lane Poor MM5.

[David Schwab]

It sounds like the MM pickup has a short in one of the coils to the shield.

The Audere shouldn't be supplying voltage to the pickup, but it uses a floating ground for the pickup's common return, and keeps it separate from the ground.

Scratchy controls usually means there is a DC bias issue and DC voltage is being passed through the controls.

[David King]

Exactly as David states.
The Audere floating ground has turned up a LOT of shorted pickups out there. Disconnecting the shield is the only thing you can do though you could try coupling the shield with a largish cap and see if that drops some of the noise.
Your best option is to set up a new shield outside the old one.
I'm willing to bet that the short is in the cable not the pickup. Unfortunately those shorts tend to happen right where the wire exits the back of the pickup making it difficult to deal with.

[tubby.twins]

Yep, a short is pretty much what I figured. The odd part is the half DC resistance value, which seems to suggest that it's one of the wires inside the pickup housing. Perhaps it's the short wire which connects the two coils together internally, since this wasn't supposed to be a "split coil" model pickup and that particular wire was not intended to be brought out of the pickup.

Thanks for the correction - a floating ground makes more sense. I'll try adding shielding to the pickup cavity. What value of "largish" would be appropriate for the capacitor?

[David King]

Right, if you are getting 1/2 your total DCR at the drain then the short has got to be internal.
Think of it this way you have a balanced output pickup, that's got to be worth something..

Try 1-10 mF and see if that does anything. If not, try 100mF. I have no idea if it will get you close to 60Hz but I think it should do something above that.

[belwar]

a little late but as promised .. M4.0W and M4.0N

Here are the photos. I just bulk converted them, some are duplicates.

[belwar]

More of them

[belwar]

even more

[belwar]

more

[David Schwab]

Invasion of the sidewinders! And Jimmy called, he wants his ruler back.

What was the pole/blade made of in the M4.0W?

[belwar]

It was made of more ceramic mags

[tubby.twins]

More ceramic mags? Then that explains the strange readings I got with magnetic paper.

[David Schwab]

It was made of more ceramic mags

That's what I thought it looked like!

He really went with minimal amounts of steel in these pickups.

[belwar]

Yeah I noticed that too. It's foreign to me because I like steel in a pickup!

For my next trick, Im going to make a Wal Style Side Winder!

[ModulusMK]

It looks like the HB, only the coils faced to each other and laid on the side and added steel pole pieces...

[David King]

So let's get this straight; the "N" or Narrow sidewinders have the pole pieces running down the center? That would presumably focus the field at a small piece of the string's length.

The "w" or wide sidewiders have an extra ceramic bar or short pieces of ceramic bar sitting vertically between the two coils?

Steel is going to raise the inductance and that would raise the resonant peak frequency?
As I understand it Lane was interested in keeping the resonant peak lower as that resulted is a brighter *sounding* pickup. (A peak at 1 or 2kHz is going to sound a lot brighter than a similar sized peak at 5-6kHz simply because our ears are so much more sensitive at the 1-2kHz band).