Humming Full Shred?

[Agitator]

I'll just post the text I sent to Seymour Duncan customer support. I haven't gotten a reply yet so I guess I'll try with you guys.

Greetings,
I am writing to you in regard to a large amount of hum that I appear to be getting from a Full Shred pickup to ask if it is expected. I know all pickups, even humbuckers, produce some noise but this seems like a bit too much.

My guitar is a Dean EVO1000, brige pup is an Invader and neck pup is the Full Shred (bridge model!). They are wired for coil tapping with a push/pull and my guitar tech swears to god that everything is wired and grounded correctly.

On a high gain setting on my Line6 Pod Studio UX2 interface, the Invaders hum is close to inaudible, while the Full Shred hums loudly, even while playing it.
I would like to note that the direction the guitar is facing influences the hum. On the neck humbucker it is loudest facing roughly West or East (-24dB), on the bridge Humbucker it is loudest facing South or North (-50dB). Also on both of the split coils it is loudest facing South or North (-12dB).
When the guitar is facing West or East, the amount of hum from the Full Shred humbucker and it's one split coil is about the same (-24dB), but the 'color' of the hum changes. It's weird to me that a humbucker would hum as loudly as its one single coil in any situation. If I turn South or North, the humbucker's hum quiets down and the single coil's gets louder.

I have recorded a sound sample comparing the pickups (guitar facing West). First I play the bridge humbucker (quiet when not playing). At 0:13s I switch to the neck humbucker and the hum is obvious when holding the strings and even when playing.

Note that the problem persists on various amplifiers and cables. I have also tapped all of the polepieces with a screwdriver and they all work.

Sorry for the long read.

Does anybody else find this odd? My guitar tech won't be convinced that anything is wrong at all and says that it's just how the pickup is, or that it's the guitars fault, but I don't quite buy that as I've never heard this much hum from any humbucker, ever. Even the ****ty stock Dean pups didn't hum close to as much as this Full Shred does. It was bought used though, but the previous owner says it worked fine.
I will try to supply pictures of the wiring if necessary.

Cheers, Sam

 

[CTN]

Re: Humming Full Shred?

have you ruled out stray hum from electrical devices in your surroundings?

ruling that out, it's possible that the pickup isn't properly grounded ie a cold solder joint, or maybe too little solder and insufficient mechanical contact between the conductor wire and the pot/switch whatever.

There's also the slimmer possibility that it's just a bit microphonic and might need to be wax potted again (which I'm sure Duncan could do for you)

 

[Agitator]

Re: Humming Full Shred?

It's natural that it picks up some EM noise from the enviornment, but that would appear on both pups then. The hum I am talking about is on the neck FS only. You can hear the difference in the noise from the two pickups in the audio linked in the original post.

As noted the guy who set it up swears that it's wired and grounded properly so for now I'm ruling that out too. Might get it checked by someone else later on.

As far as the possibility of being microphonic: I've recorded myself shouting into both the bridge Invader and the neck Full Shred and the FS picked up the shout about 2 times louder (as seen graphically in Audacity). Does that confirm your theory in any way?

 

[CTN]

Re: Humming Full Shred?

pretty crappy tech if he insists there is nothing wrong when you can clearly hear the hum... just saying, maybe you should find a better tech. Never rule out a simple wiring problem until you've managed to rule it out with electrical testing. Wiring screwups are easy to make if you're in a hurry or don't pay close enough attention.

As for the microphonic thing: microphonic means that *something* is vibrating that's not supposed to, and the result of that is usually hum or squeal or some other kind of unwanted noise. Doesn't mean your pickup is evolving into a microphone, and your shout test says nothing about the source of the hum

hopefully you hear back from Duncan support soon, they should be able to take care of you.

 

[Agitator]

Re: Humming Full Shred?

Here is the wiring of my guitar (drew a diagram cause it's hard to see from pics) link

The difference from the SD standard wiring is that the green and bare wires from both pups go to the casing of the 3-way and from there to the tone pot via one cable, instead of going straight to the volume. But as far as my electrical knowledge goes, that shouldn't change a thing, or it should make both pups function abnormally, not just the neck.. I'm lost here.

P.S.: I got a reply from SD support and got asked for pics, which I sent, but they haven't replied back in 3 days now, so here I am.