Re: Is it possible to wire a humbucker so that it doesn't buck hum?
TheArchitect said:
If you swap the hot and ground you will have big time hum.
Not necessarily, only if the return wire is connected to the pickups screening.
As i've said before, the use of terms like "hot" and "ground" instead of the more technically descriptive "signal" and "return" only serves to cause confusion.
In any SD humbucker with 4 conductor wiring you have a black wire, a red wire, a white wire, a green wire and a screen wire which is bare and makes contact with the foil screening. The red and white wires are normally connected to bridge the two coils, the red wire being the
signal of the one coil and the white wire being the
return of the other coil.
Once connected, the signal is normally black and the return green. The screen goes to ground, and normally so does the return, but there is no reason why the they can't be swapped, as long as the screen wire still goes to ground, so that the green wire is the signal and the black the return. The decisions are arbitrary and based on the relative polarity of any other pickups in circuit.
It's my guess that Natman is listening to inductive noise from the guitar's wiring, not the humbucker. This is a common mistake, assuming that a humbucker will cure all inductive noise. If the guitar's control circuitry isn't screened all the wiring will be acting as r/f aerials.
