Hum in serial mode

[Demious]

I have a Strat with SD pickups, an STK-S6 at the neck, an SSL-5 as middle and a Red Devil at the bridge. I started out with a Little 59 at the bridge and then everything was nice and quiet, just a little hiss with distortion, that is the same in all different settings. Now I switched the Little 59 for the Red Devil and in parallel mode everything is fine, the same in split mode, but in serial mode a hum is introduced. on sustained notes the hum will drown out the note when dying out, which is very annoying.
I went over all wires and connections and couldnt find anything wrong. Because there are a lot of wires, I eventually rewired everything, paying extra close attention to every wire I added, measuring the connections, make sure there are no nicks in the wires, or unwanted connection because of bare pieces of wires being bend when closing the guitar, anything touching the shielding, but I cant find anything that reduces the hum.
Does anyone have any advise on where a hum can come from, or how to deal with it, when a Red Devil is in serial mode?

 

[Blille]

That’s strange. I haven’t installed one but it should behave like the lil 59. Can you post pics of the wiring?

 

[devastone]

Yeah, weirder that it doesn't hum in split mode. Something is wrong somewhere, maybe double check all the grounds? You did ground the bare wire, correct? It shouldn't be part of any switching or anything.

 

[uOpt]

I have a Strat with SD pickups, an STK-S6 at the neck, an SSL-5 as middle and a Red Devil at the bridge. I started out with a Little 59 at the bridge and then everything was nice and quiet, just a little hiss with distortion, that is the same in all different settings. Now I switched the Little 59 for the Red Devil and in parallel mode everything is fine, the same in split mode, but in serial mode a hum is introduced. on sustained notes the hum will drown out the note when dying out, which is very annoying.

Can you clarify? You are only talking about the bridge pickup's own coils in series and parallel, right?

Not about putting the bridge pickup or parts thereof into series with the other pickups?

 

[Blille]

A classic hum source that is hard to identify is to wire the output switch backwards.

But if you put pics it may be easier

 

[Demious]

Since I already opened up the guitar, I thought to do some tests, to cut out other components. I took everything off the volume knob, except for the output and ground, of course, and I connected the pickup direct to the volume knob. So now I have the Red Devil only, without any influence from other components or wiring.
First I had the green wire connected to the shell of the volume knob (ground), together with the bare wire. The black wire was connected to the input of the volume knob and red and white connected to each other, which would connect the coils in series. This setup has the hum next to the basic hiss, just like before.
Then I connected the white wire with the green and bare to ground and the red wire, together with the black, to the volume knob's input, which would connect as a parallel setup. And this setup only has some basic hiss, but not the hum.
I also replaced the wires from the volume knob to the output jack, so there shouldnt be any issues there either.

In the complete 3-pickup wiring, the Red Devil is only split in position 2, so its works hum-canceling with the middle pickup, so no hum in split-mode works like expected.

 

[devastone]

Yeah, that's not right, connecting the white and green will never give you full humbucking. You have to do some fancy switching to get full hb, split, and parallel modes.

 

[Demious]

Yeah, that's not right, connecting the white and green will never give you full humbucking. You have to do some fancy switching to get full hb, split, and parallel modes.

That is what the schematic in the box shows. And the little59 worked fine in the same way, according to the schematic int he box, and that one worked fine. And the Red Devil seems to work fine in that mode as well. The problem is in the serial connection.
Can you please tell me how to connect serial and parallel, if its not as shown on the accompanying schematic?

 

[devastone]

Forgive me if I'm missing something, in a rush to get to work. But re-reading you post, it sounds like you tested it correctly when you just connected to the volume pot, green and bare to ground, black to output, and red/white tied together should give you full humbucking. I thought I read that you had connected the white to the green, that will put you in parallel mode, but if they are permanently connected, you can't get full hb.

I would contact Duncan support.

 

[devastone]

Also, do you have you strings/bridge grounded? That can get left off on re-wires sometimes.

 

[jeremy]

i have a red devil thats wired series/split/parallel and i dont get any hum in series or parallel, and barely any in single coil mode actually