my P-90s hum too much

[Kevincharles]

Re: my P-90s hum too much

hmmmm i might give this a try...u0pt, would you mind giving me a walkthrough? ie what i need and how id go about doing it

 

[uOpt]

Re: my P-90s hum too much

ok, just chewing on the p90s idea... if the blind coil is just the extra wire coil for hum-cancellation, if it were outside the p/up housing and didn't have magnets or poles how would it affect the p/ups characteristics?
i'm learning a lot off you btw uOpt, i appreciate it

It will still add (or remove, depending on whether you put in in series or parallel) capacitance, resistance and induction to the original pickup. That changes everything about the pickup, although the external blind coil is still less intrusive than doing a stack for P90s would be, at least you can leave the magnet setup intact.

 

[uOpt]

Re: my P-90s hum too much

hmmmm i might give this a try...u0pt, would you mind giving me a walkthrough? ie what i need and how id go about doing it

Solution 1: buy the Lace Sensor P90s and report back how they are

Solution 2:

If you want the blind coil thing, you need one reverse wound coil similar to the pickup you want to use. It doesn't really matter whether it has magnets or not and hence whether it has reverse polarity or not. It needs a reverse wind. Moving a RWRP pickup away from the strings works as well as ordering a dedicated coil with no magnets from Seymour Duncan.

You just put it in and connect it in series or parallel to the main coil. That gets you hum-canceling if the facing is about the same.

Now, the trick is to get the sound back to where it belongs. In series it will be too dark, in parallel too thin.

Solutions include:

• For the series option, use tapable P90s and use the tapped coil. You can even experiment with using either side of the tap.
• For the parallel option, put a load capacitor in parallel with the pickup to get the resonance frequency down. Values between 0.2 and 1 nF might be suitable, maybe more.

You will probably get something useful out of this. The single point of pickup under the strings is an important part of a P90 sound, and you will get it either way.

 

[Zhangliqun]

Re: my P-90s hum too much

I guess Kinman is still working on his P90 stack, apparently a lot trickier than Strat or Tele stacks because it was supposed to come out about a year and a half ago. But if it's as good as the Strat pu of his I tried out once, it'll be worth the wait.

 

[theodie]

Re: my P-90s hum too much

*shields self from angry forumites* emg 60a.

That is EMG's only good sounding bucker! Does it sound like a P-90, not in your wildest dreams but, does it kick ass, it certainly does. It is not sterile and cold as hell like the rest of em. Classic sounding but, high output.

 

[The Usual]

Re: my P-90s hum too much

I guess Kinman is still working on his P90 stack, apparently a lot trickier than Strat or Tele stacks because it was supposed to come out about a year and a half ago. But if it's as good as the Strat pu of his I tried out once, it'll be worth the wait.

If anyone can pull it off, Kinman is where I'd look. I have a 60's tele bridge, and it is scary how close it gets to the real thing. Really, really close.

 

[Micah]

Re: my P-90s hum too much

Bottom line is that P90's are just noisy pickups and you have to figure out a way to live with it. Pretty much everything you can think of that would reduce the noise unfortunately also 'reduces' the tone to varying degrees, even just shielding the cavities, so you have to pick the method that minimizes treble loss.

On the other hand, if the baseplate isn't grounded, that will give you far more noise than is acceptable even from a P90. Ground that thing.

+1 I absolutely love P90's but the bottom line is that the nature of them is that they do not cancel hum (unless your in the middle position of a RW/RP set). Ultimately, you have to make a list of the things you can live with and the things you cant live without in your tone. There will always be compromise in that but you can learn to do things like be quick about turning your volume down when you stop playing or flip to the middle position when you stop playing or get a volume pedal that you can shut off quickly when you stop playing after a song (or..step on your tuner). Part of what makes the P90's have their distinct edge is that they are not hum canceling though. You have to know that when canceling hum you are actually canceling out some certain frequencies that are known for carrying hum. But some of those frequencies are musical! Thats the kicker with these things. Yes they ignore the hum problem (if you choose to call it that) but they bring with them a tonal aspect that a hum canceling design never could. In short, if you love the way these things sound (like I do) just get good @ making alterations to your playing to minimize the negative affect of them. BTW-Strat platers and Tele players have been forced to do the same thing for years but they cant stop playing them even considering the extra "character" that goes with them because they love the way they sound.

 

[Micah]

Re: my P-90s hum too much

As other has said, your hum problem is a different can of worms from the feedback. For hum, ditto to everything re. shielding and grounding. Gibson came up with an interesting way to tackle p90 hum on their Blues Hawk. They used a third, "dummy pickup", which was just a coil wrapped around a pup bobbin without magnets. The wire is wound in the opposite direction from the real pickups for hum cancelation. If you google Blues Hawk, you can probably find the schematics.

Wow! I never knew this I always thought that middle pickup was live. I have always thought the Blues Hawks were pretty cool guitars. Its a shame they stopped making them, but I have seen them used for as low as $600 before tho--that might have to be an addition one of these days

 

[alex1fly]

Re: my P-90s hum too much

That is EMG's only good sounding bucker! Does it sound like a P-90, not in your wildest dreams but, does it kick ass, it certainly does. It is not sterile and cold as hell like the rest of em. Classic sounding but, high output.

gets killer cleans with the guitar volume way down. a bonus of the low output wind/high output preamp is that you get great cleans with low guitar volume, and from there the guitar volume acts as a clean boost.