NGD buzzkill

dotsdad

dotsdad

Well-known member
New Classic Stack Plus / Vintage Hot Stack combo finally got here...took guitar apart and installed them tonight...neck and middle are dead silent, but the bridge buzzes like a regular single coil. I took the guitar back apart, double checked the ground and also that the red wire wasnt shorted...still buzzed.

Called musicians friend, got ok to return it...they were nice and helpful but wasted 15 minutes on the phone getting everything straight. Now i gotta take the guitar apart AGAIN, go out of my way to find a ups store, wait a week or two with my guitar in pieces til the replacement gets here, and then put the guitar back together again.

Come on Duncan! We're paying 85 bucks for 3 bucks worth of wire and magnet. Get it right the first time!!!
 
Re: NGD buzzkill

That sucks man! I feel your pain. You'll get yo guitar playing, just you wait :)


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Re: NGD buzzkill

That's a bummer dude. Most of us have multiple axes tho. You just gotta accept that there's ALWAYS something to work on, and enjoy the work. Rather than let it frustrate you or keep you from enjoying your other instruments and your music. I used to make surfboards. That way WAY worse. It would take 2 8 hour days of work getting filthy and exhausted to finish a board. Then you have to go drive to the beach, suit up, and go hassle with a bunch of people to get a good wave. Guitars are way chiller I think. No mess (at least just with assembling them). And you can just plug it in immediately in the comfort of your own home. It's a good life.
 
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Re: NGD buzzkill

Clint 55 said:
That's a bummer dude. Most of us have multiple axes tho. You just gotta accept that there's ALWAYS something to work on, and enjoy the work. Rather than let it frustrate you or keep you from enjoying your other instruments and your music. I used to make surfboards. That way WAY worse. It would take 2 8 hour days of work getting filthy and exhausted to finish a board. Then you have to go drive to the beach, suit up, and go hassle with a bunch of people to get a good wave. Guitars are way chiller I think. No mess (at least just with assembling them). And you can just plug it in immediately in the comfort of your own home. It's a good life.
Click to expand...

I miss surfing, but if you can't walk to your own beach every morning it's a hassle; even driving across town is too much, what with parking, lugging **** around, not being a "local" etc.

Anyway it's alarming that there's actually a fault in one of those pickups as they're pretty contained; did you try to measure DCR from the actual solder points in the baseplate (circuit board) to ensure there was resistance/continuity? Not that I doubt you know what you're doing with these, but if you haven't already shipped it out it might be worth a check for a cold joint somewhere.
 
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Re: NGD buzzkill

I guess i'm lucky, never had a bad Duncan.

I do have a bad EMG 89 though... I have about four EMG89s and they're all great, but this one just seems to sound totally dead and low-endy. No idea why, measuring various places in the circuit it seems to read the same.
 
Re: NGD buzzkill

Everyone's assuming a bad pickup, but it's almost always a wiring mistake. Mentioning the red wire makes me wonder.

Before you return it, make sure you stripped the red and white, twisted them together, soldered them, and put tape over the end.

Make sure the end of the green is twisted and soldered to the silver, and both soldered to ground. The black goes to positive.

It sounds as if you didn't join the red and white. If not, the pickup is humming like a single coil.
 
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Re: NGD buzzkill

The stacks are diffferent than humbuckers. You dont connect red and white on the stacks. white is hot and black is ground like a single coil. Red kills the dummy coil for pure single coil operation. (There is no green). Thats why I was double checking to make sure the red wasnt shorted out.
 
Re: NGD buzzkill

That's the irony, lol. Most people experience "user error" if they assume a Stack Plus is wired like a humbucker; that's how I got one for like seven bucks from a guy who assumed it was broken.
 
Re: NGD buzzkill

A Stack Plus is not wired like a humbucker; it has a bare ground, a ground lead (black,) a hot (white,) and a red (which acts like a tap, not a conventional four-conductor/split-able arrangement.) He got his other Stack(s) Plus operating so I assume he knows that.

You only get full resistance between ground and white; you tape off red.

I'm also alarmed to hear it won't work out of the box though.
 
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Just got the replacement today. It measures 11k start to finish and 7.9k from tone coil to dummy coil. The dud measures 7.9k from start to finish and 7.9 from start to dummy tap. No reading from dummy tap to finish. The Dummy coil is definitely dead.

Im glad you mentioned measuring the DCR. I was starting to doubt my ninja skills :^)
 
Re: NGD buzzkill

dotsdad said:
Come on Duncan! We're paying 85 bucks for 3 bucks worth of wire and magnet. Get it right the first time!!!
Click to expand...

You aren't paying for materials. You are paying for Duncan's knowledge.

Also there's more than $3 worth of materials *and* labor there. [emoji6]

There's no reason a stacked pickup would hum unless one coil is shorted or its wired in phase.

But was it humming or buzzing? Buzzing would be ungrounded shields or something mis wired.


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