Re: RFI and Toroidal Choke
I remember having a similar idea a while back. More than anything I was after a cheaper alternative to a popular Xicon audio transformer and I remember sifting through ebay one night more than anything it would have been fun to say oh yeah you need a ferrite core as it sounds almost as buzz worthy as most wanting a treble bleed. Plus I just would have liked the look of them but couldn't at least on ebay from china find a Toroidal Choke with enough choke.
I'm no engineer but a quick glance. I'll point two things out that would somewhat discourage me and shed some insight.
the three I looked at on an electronics supplier, at three various sizes have a minimal amount of amperage that you need. The smallest was around 2-5 Amps. A passive guitar has around 1A. Maybe there are some chokes that are less demanding I don't know about. Just be aware of that. Just like transistors , opamps and capacitors there will be a data sheet if they are from a reputable supplier. The only way you'd ever be able to increase the amperage is adding a power supply. Perhaps adding a battery to it. Just make sure not to mix maH (milliamps hours) and the usual type of current measuring milliamps. Without the right amount of amperage either you'd get no signal. Or you would get no benefits.
Now a choke will have an inductance so depending on the inductance of the choke once it's on it will choke out some signal. The less inductance the more of your usual tone. A typical single coil can have between 1 to 4 henries of inductance. This is for 2 wire single coils. The Toroidal chokes I've seen were at best in megahenries when I was on ebay. To put things into perspective 1000mh is 1H. Think megabytes to gigabytes is usually my way of remembering it. I've seen maybe one set of single coils in a no name strat someone gave me where the pickups where 0.6H or something stupidly low. The pickups were 2k. I think if I plugged into Necrophagist, Nile or Meshuggah's rig I'd still get a sparkling clean tone out of those pickups.
it is a good question where to add it. Under the jack plate would be amazing as it would be the least intrusive. Plus filtering everything out before it goes to the cable.
I'd probably avoid them. Unless someones got a brilliant solution with them. Modding the wiring I'd try Dan Armstrong wiring instead, or don breja (youtuber) or deaf eddie who on his website had a lot of ambitious wirings on. perhaps adding a dummy coil which does kill some of the high frequencies. Perhaps a noise gate or something called the Ilich Noise Cancelling System which is impressive but not 100%. Personally I'd just put some noiseless pickups in and forget about it. If I need that strat tone I'll just flip a switch for a coilsplit. Musicman has the silent circuit out too which is well documented if you want to give it a shot with a veroboard or similar. I wish it was as simple as adding a choke otherwise fender would have jumped on it decades ago I feel.
good luck on this project, if anyone figures it out there will be a ferrari in their driveway in no time haha
not me playing and I'm sure there is a better way to install it but either way this is one of the more impressive ones I've seen. Though not 100% silent it'll help. To add onto this the usual copper shielding to a power bar with RFI and EMI filters to plug your amp in before it hits the outlet helps big time.
