Tweet
I installed an EVH frankenstein pickup in an 80s schecter strat (which was SSS, now its HSS) after the bridge pup went microphonic and since the body was routed for HSS (and the guitar had a floyd on in so it seemed to want a humbucker there).
Then I noticed that it hums almost as much as the single coil pickups.
(Like more than half of the level of hum in terms of level, too much for me since i play live in a venue with an inductive hearing aid loop system that makes single coil pups unusable). The two remaining single coils in parallel (ie neck and middle on together via the 5 way switch) are dead quiet (with a tiny bit of white noise as you would expect but nothing I would call "hum").
I've stuffed around with this in every way I can think of, for several hours, and can't figure it out.
First I tried the pickup conntected to nothing except a shielded cable straight into the amp - it hummed. So I figured I had a dud pickup. I looked this up on google and found another two people in forums saying that their EVH frenkenstein pickup hummed or was noisy.
I plugged in an epiphone pup i had left over, straight into the amp, using the same cable, etc, and it was noticeably quieter (but still hummed more than the guitar with the two single coils in series). So again I thought it must be the EVH pup.
I opened up the pickup to check out the wiring. Its wired with single conductor cable. The two coils each have one black and one white lead coming out of them. They are definitely wired in series. I thought the most likely option is that the wiring was done wrong accidently at the factory. Though I didnt think they could be accidently wired backwards (out of phase with respect to the string signal ie in phase wrt hum) since the pup sounded plenty loud (and pretty good really for tone). Despite this the first thing I tried was reversing the direction of one of the coils. This made the hum a lot louder (now it was maybe double the level of a single coil pup on its own as I would have expected from a humbucker with one coil wired backwards). So I think the coils must have been in the correct phase. i put them back how they were.
I tried putting the magnet in different orientations to see if it made any difference (no difference)....
The only other thing I could think of in terms of wiring, assuming that the coils are correctly in series, and in the right direction wrt each other, is that the inside vs outside of the coils might be around the wrong way. So I tried reversing the direction of both coils together (by leaving the middle connection the same and swapping the leads that went to hot and ground). not a lot of difference. maybe a bit worse. Finally (though i didnt think this would help) i tried swapping the order the coils went in wrt each other, by disconnecting the middle connection and using those as the hot and ground, and joining what was before the hot and ground to make the new middle connection. I wasnt sure which was the correct direction of this setup wrt which is hot and which should be ground ( i remember reading somewhere years ago that a pup coil is meant to have one end hot and one end ground and if you reverse it, its worse for noise/hum), so i tried both ways. i think one way was slightly better than the other with the good way about as "good" as the pickup was originally. (ie it didnt make much/any difference)
I cant think of any other possible ways to wire the coils with them in series and in the proper phase. So my conclusion is they were probably wired correctly to begin with.
BTW the original wiring was with the two white leads soldered together for the "middle", one black going to hot and one to ground, with the black wires coming out of the coils "crossing over" each other physically, so that each wire was soldered to the other side of the pickup casing to the side its coil was on.
THEN I tried just connecting one coil only just to see what that would be like in parallel with the middle pup AND ITS QUIET. There is very slight hum, (this is with ONE coil, the bridge-most one, of the EVH in parallel with the middle pup via the 5 way switch), there is more hum than the neck and bridge together, but much, much, less than when trying to wire the EVH as a humbucker. The amount of hum is about what I would have expected from slightly mismatched coils. One coil of the EVH is about 7k and the single coil schecter pups are 5k. ( I think they are monstertones since they are 5k and 3k when tapped with the rest of the winding being 2k, which is the same as monstertones).
I forgot to say.... i measured both coils of the EVH and they are both the same, about 7k each, and about 14k when in series.
What I am really wondering is what else is there that can be wrong? Assuming the coils are working, and in the right phase (reverse wound etc) how can they not cancel hum at least as well as two single coils much further apart and not even of the same type????? From what I understand of how humbucking pups work, its the coils that cancel the hum by being reverse wound (out of phase), the magnets dont come into the equation at all (unless you want some sound from the strings... but in terms of hum vs no hum they dont affect anything).
THEN I thought maybe there is something weird in the guitar so that the humbucker is being made noisy.... I tried putting the epiphone pup in where I had the humbucker AND ITS STILL MORE NOISY THAN THE TWO SINGLE COILS TOGETHER quite a lot more, but not as bad as the EVH humbucker.
Then I gave up.
I left it with only one of the two EVH coils connected. The position 2 (or 4 depending on which end you call 1) of the switch with bridge and middle is not a bad sound, very usable.... I'll buy some multi conductor cable and rewire the EVH pup so that I can use it coil tapped as a single coil or a "humbucker".
And order another pickup (not another EVH) and try that in there............
FINALLY (the ghost at the end of this post).... I am sure that at one point, towards the end of my experimenting, when I had the EVH pup wired straight into the amp, with the magnet out of the epi pup (also a PAF type of magnet i think its alnico too) in the EVH pup (i was trying everything.....) , and intermittently, when i moved the coils into just the right position (they were sitting on the magnet and baseplate but not screwed down so there was a bit of slack to move them), IT WAS QUIET. I could make it go from the usual single-coil-like hum to quiet on and off by holding the coils in exactly the right position.... as if there was a loose connection in there somewhere. I went back and forth from one position to ther other several times (it was only a few mm of movement) and it went from hum to quiet, repeatedly and consistently. After that I tried putting back the EVH magnet and after that no way of holding or wiggling the coils could make the hum go away (like all the other times apart from the one time I just wrote about). I put the coils back on the ohmmeter, one at a time, and wiggled away, and they were consistently 7k with no jumps of the needle (an analog meter), i really dont think there is a loose wire..... but i dont know..... maybe that one time I was shorting something out without realising it and there would have been no signal along with the no noise..... or maybe there is something physical/structural thats wrong with them.....................?
Does anyone have any ideas on what can make the two coils wired together still hum, almost as loud as a single coil?
Then I noticed that it hums almost as much as the single coil pickups.
(Like more than half of the level of hum in terms of level, too much for me since i play live in a venue with an inductive hearing aid loop system that makes single coil pups unusable). The two remaining single coils in parallel (ie neck and middle on together via the 5 way switch) are dead quiet (with a tiny bit of white noise as you would expect but nothing I would call "hum").
I've stuffed around with this in every way I can think of, for several hours, and can't figure it out.
First I tried the pickup conntected to nothing except a shielded cable straight into the amp - it hummed. So I figured I had a dud pickup. I looked this up on google and found another two people in forums saying that their EVH frenkenstein pickup hummed or was noisy.
I plugged in an epiphone pup i had left over, straight into the amp, using the same cable, etc, and it was noticeably quieter (but still hummed more than the guitar with the two single coils in series). So again I thought it must be the EVH pup.
I opened up the pickup to check out the wiring. Its wired with single conductor cable. The two coils each have one black and one white lead coming out of them. They are definitely wired in series. I thought the most likely option is that the wiring was done wrong accidently at the factory. Though I didnt think they could be accidently wired backwards (out of phase with respect to the string signal ie in phase wrt hum) since the pup sounded plenty loud (and pretty good really for tone). Despite this the first thing I tried was reversing the direction of one of the coils. This made the hum a lot louder (now it was maybe double the level of a single coil pup on its own as I would have expected from a humbucker with one coil wired backwards). So I think the coils must have been in the correct phase. i put them back how they were.
I tried putting the magnet in different orientations to see if it made any difference (no difference)....
The only other thing I could think of in terms of wiring, assuming that the coils are correctly in series, and in the right direction wrt each other, is that the inside vs outside of the coils might be around the wrong way. So I tried reversing the direction of both coils together (by leaving the middle connection the same and swapping the leads that went to hot and ground). not a lot of difference. maybe a bit worse. Finally (though i didnt think this would help) i tried swapping the order the coils went in wrt each other, by disconnecting the middle connection and using those as the hot and ground, and joining what was before the hot and ground to make the new middle connection. I wasnt sure which was the correct direction of this setup wrt which is hot and which should be ground ( i remember reading somewhere years ago that a pup coil is meant to have one end hot and one end ground and if you reverse it, its worse for noise/hum), so i tried both ways. i think one way was slightly better than the other with the good way about as "good" as the pickup was originally. (ie it didnt make much/any difference)
I cant think of any other possible ways to wire the coils with them in series and in the proper phase. So my conclusion is they were probably wired correctly to begin with.
BTW the original wiring was with the two white leads soldered together for the "middle", one black going to hot and one to ground, with the black wires coming out of the coils "crossing over" each other physically, so that each wire was soldered to the other side of the pickup casing to the side its coil was on.
THEN I tried just connecting one coil only just to see what that would be like in parallel with the middle pup AND ITS QUIET. There is very slight hum, (this is with ONE coil, the bridge-most one, of the EVH in parallel with the middle pup via the 5 way switch), there is more hum than the neck and bridge together, but much, much, less than when trying to wire the EVH as a humbucker. The amount of hum is about what I would have expected from slightly mismatched coils. One coil of the EVH is about 7k and the single coil schecter pups are 5k. ( I think they are monstertones since they are 5k and 3k when tapped with the rest of the winding being 2k, which is the same as monstertones).
I forgot to say.... i measured both coils of the EVH and they are both the same, about 7k each, and about 14k when in series.
What I am really wondering is what else is there that can be wrong? Assuming the coils are working, and in the right phase (reverse wound etc) how can they not cancel hum at least as well as two single coils much further apart and not even of the same type????? From what I understand of how humbucking pups work, its the coils that cancel the hum by being reverse wound (out of phase), the magnets dont come into the equation at all (unless you want some sound from the strings... but in terms of hum vs no hum they dont affect anything).
THEN I thought maybe there is something weird in the guitar so that the humbucker is being made noisy.... I tried putting the epiphone pup in where I had the humbucker AND ITS STILL MORE NOISY THAN THE TWO SINGLE COILS TOGETHER quite a lot more, but not as bad as the EVH humbucker.
Then I gave up.
I left it with only one of the two EVH coils connected. The position 2 (or 4 depending on which end you call 1) of the switch with bridge and middle is not a bad sound, very usable.... I'll buy some multi conductor cable and rewire the EVH pup so that I can use it coil tapped as a single coil or a "humbucker".
And order another pickup (not another EVH) and try that in there............
FINALLY (the ghost at the end of this post).... I am sure that at one point, towards the end of my experimenting, when I had the EVH pup wired straight into the amp, with the magnet out of the epi pup (also a PAF type of magnet i think its alnico too) in the EVH pup (i was trying everything.....) , and intermittently, when i moved the coils into just the right position (they were sitting on the magnet and baseplate but not screwed down so there was a bit of slack to move them), IT WAS QUIET. I could make it go from the usual single-coil-like hum to quiet on and off by holding the coils in exactly the right position.... as if there was a loose connection in there somewhere. I went back and forth from one position to ther other several times (it was only a few mm of movement) and it went from hum to quiet, repeatedly and consistently. After that I tried putting back the EVH magnet and after that no way of holding or wiggling the coils could make the hum go away (like all the other times apart from the one time I just wrote about). I put the coils back on the ohmmeter, one at a time, and wiggled away, and they were consistently 7k with no jumps of the needle (an analog meter), i really dont think there is a loose wire..... but i dont know..... maybe that one time I was shorting something out without realising it and there would have been no signal along with the no noise..... or maybe there is something physical/structural thats wrong with them.....................?
Does anyone have any ideas on what can make the two coils wired together still hum, almost as loud as a single coil?
Comment