What Went Wrong

[LowNote]

I just wound my first P90 and the bobbin curled up on both sides. Did I use too much tension? I tried to post a photo and it wont work for me.

LowNote

[copperheadroads]

Flaring when winding a P-90 is normal .most of the p-90 bobbins on the market that I've used are not that rigid & do show a little flaring.
Some of the flaring can be caused by having you limiters a little too close to the edge.

[LowNote]

Peeled it and rewound with less tension and I brought the limiters in a little. Both pick ups came out with very little flaring.

Thanks
LowNote

[big_teee]

Those bobbins have such a long winding area, they are easy to flare.
Most of the bobbins I've used are of low quality not helping on flaring either.
One thing I tried, was to use double sided tape and tape a piece of 1/16" steel the length and width of the bobbin.
The trick is to put the steel plate taped to both sides.
The steel plate stuck to both sides will support the bobbin.
One side will attach to the winder.
A bit overkill, but It worked for me.
T

[SonnyW]

I have had the flaring problem too on some P-90's wound full. To compensate, I made a wooden block roughly the same size as the P-90 bobbin and use that on one side of it and the other side is up against my tooling, so it holds the bobbin down, and I cut my tension almost in half to about 15-20 grams. That works for me.

[Kindly Killer]

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t33964/

Kayaker CA showed me a neat way to mount bobbins that helps with flaring in that thread.

[LowNote]

So, I got them mounted into the guitar and they have a bad buzz, both of them. Is that normal. I have another Tele with singles and I plugged it in and no buzz. So, that tells
that it's the pick ups.

LowNote

[SonnyW]

So, I got them mounted into the guitar and they have a bad buzz, both of them. Is that normal. I have another Tele with singles and I plugged it in and no buzz. So, that tells
that it's the pick ups.

LowNote

They shouldn't have that much more buzz than other singles. Did you connect the baseplate to the shield of the lead wire? If not, that might cause buzzing I would think. The P-90 that I wound last week with the lower tension didn't have much buzz.

[LowNote]

I checked the wiring and the black wire going in is soldered to the base plate and grounded inside the control area. I hooked them directly to the amp and they buzzed.

LowNote

[SonnyW]

Maybe some of the others on the forum have run into this on P90's and can jump in here. I'm out of ideas to help. I have made 3 P90's in the last two months with different specs all over the map, and none of them had any noticeable buzzing problems or customer comments on buzzing. None of them were potted. One was overwound with 41 wire and low tension for a PRS neck, one was 43 PE wire and 20% overwound for the bridge in the same PRS guitar, and one was 42 PE way underwound for a tele neck per customer requests. The PRS with my P90's happened to be back in the shop for a setup after the customer installed the pups and I plugged it in a little while ago and no issues with extra buzz. I bet it is something simple but I can't think of what it might be.

[copperheadroads]

I checked the wiring and the black wire going in is soldered to the base plate and grounded inside the control area. I hooked them directly to the amp and they buzzed.

LowNote

How were they hooked up directly to an amp ? you said they were installed in a guitar ?
P-90's can be noisy, but i agree with what Sonny said ,I't shouldn't be any noisier than other single coils .
Are you testing them with high gain ? I think you have a grounding issue or are we trying to stop All the hum ? because p-90's like all true single coils have 60 cycle hum .
What kind of pickups are in your tele ?
My apologies for the newbie questions, but trying to eliminate some possibilities

[big_teee]

I seem to get to work on guys noisy guitars.
Usually it's not just one thing.
If it's one no one seems to be able to fix, and has lots of static noise?
I usually rip things out and start over.
Starting with shielded cable from the jack, directly to the 3 way switch.
Shielded wire from the switch to the pots, keeping all wires and leads short.
For performing musicians, not vintage I put Shielded cable on everything.
Some shielded cable I only ground on one end.
I put heavy grounded foil on pickguards, and as large as feasible ground wire on the bridge.
I use good high quality Pots, and look for cold solder joints.
Hardly ever is it the pickups fault.
My test SG, got that way a while back, and I totally rewired it, and replaced the Pots.
The combination of everything, fixed it!
GL,
T

[LowNote]

copperheadroads...I plugged a guitar cable into the amp and touched the pick up leads to the tip and ground of the cable, no gain control on the amp. I do have a grounding issue in my house that will cause a problem but, very rarely. The buzz is louder than normal. I tried deferent cables and amp with the same results. I will try it at the studio this afternoon.

Still haven't been able to post photos. I followed the thread in the FAQ.

LowNote

[big_teee]

copperheadroads...I plugged a guitar cable into the amp and touched the pick up leads to the tip and ground of the cable, no gain control on the amp. I do have a grounding issue in my house that will cause a problem but, very rarely. The buzz is louder than normal. I tried deferent cables and amp with the same results. I will try it at the studio this afternoon.

Still haven't been able to post photos. I followed the thread in the FAQ.

LowNote

That can be a good test, but I like to use a jack.
I have a jack with 2 foot long wires soldered to it.
I plug the cord into it, and wire nut the wires to the pickup wires.
I wave the pickup around to test for microphonics after potting.
On regular single coils like in strats and teles, hook up the wires both ways, the tip to the white, and the tip to the black.
If your testing a pickup like a p90 that is grounded to a baseplate that won't work.
If you have other pickups laying around test them.
I have known good pickups in a drawer that I use for comparison.
T
In a guitar you can hook your pickups directly to the jack one at a time, to rule out other components.

[SonnyW]

Forgive me if this suggestion is too obvious, but I have had customers hook up a pickup backwards when they installed it and got a loud buzz all the time because they hooked the hot lead of the pickup to ground. When that happens the pickups will buzz very loudly all the time the guitar is plugged in. Just looking at all the possibilities here.

Here is how I hook up the P90-s internally. Not saying this is the only way, just how I do it. In the first pic, the start lead of the coil is black at the coil, and hooks to the shield side of the cable, and the finish lead that is coming off the coil that is red is hooked to the hot (black) lead of the cable. The little yellow wire going from where I solder the shield to the baseplate to the lug is not really needed, but I put it on anyway to make the pickup look more vintage.