Humbucking with a pedal...

[artsinbloodshed]

hey guys.
A friend of mine recently asked me a question:
As he uses guitars with single pickups or P90 ones, he gets a lot of hum when using overdrives or high gain pedals.
Converting his guitars from single pickups to humbuckers would need to rout the bodies...answer is: no way!
Do anyone of you guys know if a humbucking system is possible to build inside a pedal ?

[Johan]

you need to find a way of picking up the EXACT SAME noise for it to cancel itself out the way humbuckers do ( or attempt to ) so, no you cant to it later than at the guitar itself. Gibson tried dummy coils in the Blueshawk and there are single coil sized humbuckers, but the sound will not be the same. there is no simple solution I've ever heard of that pleases singlecoil players, but you could at least try to shield the pick up cavity in his guitar( or better yet, have him do it..)
J

[user]

Or connect the single coils in series, as opposed to parallel- humbuckers. It wont get you a real humbucking sound, but the principle is the same. 

[artsinbloodshed]

yeah,I guessed it right; i did not think it was possible...
Too bad though,it would have been a real relief for all single pickups players!
Anyway, thank you guys!

[amptramp]

The only real cure is to minimize the hum at the source by shielding the guitar.  This article is specific to a Telecaster, but similar design processes will work for other guitars:

http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/shielding/shield3.php

I redid some of the wiring in my old Cort as shown in the guitar pictures thread and the difference was night-and-day.  If his guitars have erratic grounds like the Cort originally had (potentiometer grounds soldered to the pot case then grounded to aluminum foil via the case), then a slight rewire (this took a half hour, mainly to remove and replace the strings) may be in order.  The picture is page 16, October 02, 2009 on:

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=56877.300

[ashcat_lt]

Or connect the single coils in series, as opposed to parallel- humbuckers. It wont get you a real humbucking sound, but the principle is the same.  

Actually it WILL sound more like a humbucker - noticeably darker and louder.  It won't reduce the noise any more than the parallel version.  It also still doesn't help when only pickup is selected.

On the other hand, though, a single-sized HB could have it's coils wired in parallel rather than the standard series.  This will sound more like an SC, sometimes even brighter.

Shielding really is the best answer.

[iccaros]

My wireless gets rid of any noise from the single coils,
So I worked through the ways it did this, separate ground so no reference for the noise it picks up.. NO because then I would get no audio,  Then I opened the jack and found a .0001 cap going from ground to tip on the end of the cable. So I did the same thing with the guitar jack, adjusting sizes of the cap until I could not notice a tone change. result is that I no longer get buzzing or ground hum from my 62 strat.. It sounds the same tone wise..

This will not make it sound like a humbucker but may help you kill noise.

[arawn]

Proper grounding and sheilding will kill 97% of the noise. I did that to my strat copy, and I can play around a hundred fluorescents sitting right at my monitor and I get nothing! well except the desired guitar signals.

[artsinbloodshed]

yep! shielding guitar pickups properly (pedals as well) could improve the sound...
I thought that somehow a RF filter could do the trick...
But my main assets is to ground through the enclosure.

[Gurner]

Bog standard shielding won't cure hum...that's permeating into your pickups by way of an alternating magnetic field ...the very stuff pickups thrive on.

Shielding simply helps minimize RF and other induced noise.

An RF filter won't help ....hum is low frequency (50hz, 60hz) whereas RF is very high frequency.

[R.G.]

I messed with a setup that works, kind of.

I found a web site with an active hum canceller. The guy took incoming 60Hz from the power line (through a transformer, for safety), and then half-wave rectified it. From that he did active filters to separate out 60Hz, 120Hz, 180Hz, and 240Hz. These he fed into fixed/adjustable versions of our beloved phase stages to get each harmonic at a variable phase.

From there, he ran them into separate volume controls into a mixer with the signal. You start with hum volumes down and listen to the signal, with hum. You turn up the 60Hz a little and then diddle the phase control to see if it decreases at any phase. If not, you turn the volume back down on 60 and go to the next one. If any phase makes the hum decrease, you increase/decrease the 60Hz volume and mess with phase until hum is as small as possible. Then you go to 120, 180, and 240 and repeat the volume/phase hunting. By the end, your hum should be seriously reduced.

This can work magic for fixed equipment, like an amp, as you can precisely cancel the internal and external hum sources.

It's not so good for guitar, because you move the guitar around, and the signal you were cancelling changes in amplitude and phase, so the cancellation isn't so good any more.

Aye, there's the rub...

[arawn]

point being that it should be common knowledge that all fender and most other makes of guitar come from the factory wired incorrectly. Fix the ground and sheild the cavities and most of your hum will go away. It costs like $10 TO DO. 

[MikeH]

Converting his guitars from single pickups to humbuckers would need to rout the bodies...answer is: no way!
Do anyone of you guys know if a humbucking system is possible to build inside a pedal ?

You know there are tons of p-90 sized humbucking pickups.  fyi.

[iccaros]

point being that it should be common knowledge that all fender and most other makes of guitar come from the factory wired incorrectly. Fix the ground and sheild the cavities and most of your hum will go away. It costs like $10 TO DO. 

after working in a Guitar shop in NC, I never once saw a miss wired guitar from factory, so in my experience that is an untrue statement. I have seen miss wired amps and broken wires in guitars, but not miss wired

but grounding and shielding will stop buzz but not hum, as hum  on a single coil is the direct result of a single phase amplification picking up the magnetic disturbances caused by 50Hz or 60Hz alternating mains from electrical equipment
Buzz is caused by radio waves. Humbuckers cross cancel out hum most of the time...

Buzz can not be filtered and must be stopped with correct grounding, Hum must be filtered and can not be blocked by grounding, as the pickup were created to pickup magnetic disturbances caused by moving strings.

[artsinbloodshed]

maybe Fender guitars are wired correctly or incorrectly. One thing is for sure, cheaper guitars are most of the time wired incorrectly.
My friend mostly uses a washburn with p90's, and I use a hagstrom ultra swede. Both are great guitars! but as soon as you take off the screws and take a look at the pots/cap wiring...woooooh!
proof is that I always get a pain in the *** feedback on my high gain mesa when switched on treble...too bad,the pickup is so badass! I didn't have the time to fix it yet...
Anyway, the circuit mentionned by RG looks kind of "too big" to fit in regular pedals (I mean the standard enclosures). Converting to humbucking sounds cheaper and more reliable then!
BUT, properly grounding and shielding is the less we could do about it. If you get hum AND noise,it won't help! let's get rid of the noise first....hum will have less presence...

[Gurner]

If you get hum AND noise,it won't help! let's get rid of the noise first....hum will have less presence...

Alas, I've stood next to Marshall amps set to '11' a bit too often & now have tinnitus...one of the things recommended by the medics towards mask the ringing noise in my head is to put on some background noise when sitting in a quiet room (a diversionary tactic)

Extrapolating that and applying it to our situation - if you have low frequency hum all jumbled up with general noise in your guitar signal, then I reckon that shielding & good grounding etc (to rid the general noise) may only serve to emphasize the remaining residual hum!

[Ben N]

Not sure about the whole buzz vs. hum distinction, but shielding my strat definitely made it more liveable--now I can play it without constantly being concerned with where and at what angle I am standing, even near the amp, even around flourescents. I have another strat with Bill Lawrence stacked humbuckers, and they are pretty good too, but I'd be lying if I said the sound was as good as on the other one, with its cheap GFS Vintage Alnicos. The shielded one is still a little more hum-prone, but the BLs aren't dead silent, either, just their noise tends to be a bit more diffuse, like white noise.

[Fender56]

http://www.suhrguitars.com/pickups.aspx#bpssc

They used a dummy coil at the rear of the guitar to get rid of the hum noise. Looks complicated, requires some tweaking, but the results seem good!

[Fender3D]

Why doesnt' everybody tune the guitar with hum?
It may act as 2nd voice instead of harmonizer or chorus.

[EATyourGuitar]

Why doesnt' everybody tune the guitar with hum?
It may act as 2nd voice instead of harmonizer or chorus.

not even joking here, there are many musical applications of 60Hz hum. there is a 30 min performance where the primary sound your hearing is a 60Hz hum with phasing and harmonics mixed in after the listener is introduced to the raw 60Hz. I like anything with drones in it though. its not for everybody.