Noiseless Single Coils

[killface]

Hi! I'm new. I'm putting together a tele type git-fiddle that pairs a humbucker in the neck and a telecaster bridge pick up. I am using a Pearly Gates in the neck. I really like the idea of a Vintage Stack for the bridge, which is noiseless. I got to wondering if ALL single coils paired with a humbucker would be noise cancelling. Anyone that knows please reply! Thanks! Hope everyone had a great, solitary Thanksgiving!

[DavidRavenMoon]

No, single coils hum. A humbucker has two coils. They work together to cancel (buck) hum. If you pair a real single coil with a humbucker you will still get hum.

The reason is because the way a humbucker works is each coil is wired with reverse polarity (or wound in the opposite direction). But then each coil has the opposite magnetic polarity.

When you sum the signal from the two coils, the strings are sensed in phase because of the magnetic polarity, but hum enters both coils with the same polarity and gets canceled out.

So for a single coil to hum cancel with another pickup, that other pickup must pick up hum and they have to be reverse polarity.

Stacked single coils also have two coils, but they are vertically mounted, not side by side. You always need two single coils to hum cancel.


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[Mincer]

BTW, the Vintage Stack is a nice pickup. While I love Teles with a humbucker in the neck, the issue is that they can't be volume-balanced while keeping the same traditional Tele tone in the bridge. As you increase power in the bridge (to match the volume of the humbucker) you start to move away from that tone. Some pickups do an excellent job at bridging that gap, though.
I am a fan of noiseless pickups, and use them in my Strat.

[ArtieToo]

While I love Teles with a humbucker in the neck, the issue is that they can't be volume-balanced while keeping the same traditional Tele tone in the bridge.

If you hard-wired the humbucker in parallel, I wonder if that would both, help with output level, and come closer to "Tele" tone? The Invader is surprisingly "acoustic" in parallel.

[idsnowdog]

No, a single coil is still going to hum with a humbucker when used alone. When used together with a humbucker on a three way switch it will be humbucking if wired out of phase with the neck humbucker due to phase cancellation. Stacks use two coils each wound in different directions that are humbucking when joined together in series.

[DavidRavenMoon]

No, a single coil is still going to hum with a humbucker when used alone. When used together with a humbucker it will be humbucking if wired out of phase with the neck humbucker due to phase cancellation.

No, it will still hum when used with a humbucker, because the humbucker has no hum, which is needed to cancel the hum from the single coil when you reverse the polarity (phase).

Humbuckers work by having the hum from each coil out of phase so it cancels itself out. The strings dont cancel because the reverse magnetic polarity puts them back in phase.

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[Mincer]

If you hard-wired the humbucker in parallel, I wonder if that would both, help with output level, and come closer to "Tele" tone? The Invader is surprisingly "acoustic" in parallel.

Parallel works balance-wise, but at the expense of the series humbucker sound we all love.