Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

[Chris Pile]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

The bars and clubs used to have a lot of 60 cycle hum emitters back then.... Real neon lights, the old fluorescent tubes, dimmer switches (as mentioned above), etc. Shielded cables weren't around yet, either. Unshielded cables were basically antennas, picking up all kinds of junk.

Nowadays, modern lighting fixtures are less noisy - but amps and toys have more gain. Real 50's pickups were awful in a live situation indoors. That's why Les Paul starting working on low impedance pickups that didn't have a noise problem.

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

Most wiring before the 60's was only two wires. With the third wire and plug you have a ground which can help reduce noise in audio circuits. If you aren't shielding a circuit and not grounding it the noise can regenerate and amplify if it isn't grounded. So while the amps may have not been high gain that doesn't mean they were low noise.

 

[Dave Locher]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

Cables weren't shielded back then? Holy moly!

 

[Chris Pile]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

A lot has changed since the early years.

 

[Edgecrusher]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

Another aspect that no one has mentioned is that tube matching wasnt a thing, now the tube quality was much higher and more consistent than now but it was still not uncommon back then for people to swap only a single tube when it went bad out of a pair or quartet. This mismatch would create hum and just feed into all the other sources of noise that we dont contend with anymore.

 

[superpete]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

There also seems to be the mistaken idea that those small "low gain" amps were clean across the board. You take those old 50's fenders and crank them up and there is some great crunch going on!

 

[Francois]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

Seth Lover tried to stay close to the P90 sound but without the hum people complained about.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

Guitar makers were under a lot of pressure to reduce pickup noise in the 19500's, amps were getting louder, crowds were getting bigger. Gibson wanted to retain all the P-90's great tones but without the noise, and gave Seth Lover the task in 1955. He reduced the noise, but Gibson was unhappy with the result. They lost the crisp high end and firm piano-like low end of P-90's, so they shelved their new noise-free pickup for 2 years until competitive pressure & complaints got so intense they released PAF's, unhappy as they were with their tone quality.

 

[zionstrat]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

Interesting thread. I would have expected many more of you guys to mention rf ...it's till a problem for me.

One of my favorite performance guitars has Bardon dual blade pickups and when it runs as a humbucker, it rejectes noise completely and has a more modern strat tone.

However using spina split, I often roll 50 to 75% of the second coil to get a thinner dtrat sound.

Playing and bars and hotels and office parties, we've bumped into some incredibly noisy environments even in the last couple of years. We played in an old hotel where I literally could not roll off any of the second coil without getting major noise.

Are you guys really not running into noise especially around fluorescents?



Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk

 

[beaubrummels]

Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

AC hum, dimmers, fluorescents, radio interference, computers, screen monitors; all of it falls under the heading of ‘noise’

 

[justFred]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

and the most dread noise source...the f******g bar popcorn machine.....

 

[Dave Locher]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

I was about to say "I think I can honestly say that out of all the places I played in the '80s and '90s not one of them had a popcorn machine" but then I remembered the very first bar I ever played HAD ONE! I think it broke not too long after that, though, and it was a good 30-40 feet from the stage anyway. A leftover from an earlier era, I think.
Back then I used a distortion box for my dirt and kicked it off between songs so hum was not a big concern for me. I did have a Peavy tube amp next that picked up a Czech radio program sometimes, though...

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

These days the worst is playing a cafe bar and the espresso machine going. I need an Ace Frehley LP that shoots latte machine grenades.

 

[Despair]

Re: Why were humbuckers developed? Was there really that much hum in old amps??

Bill Lawrence has a page on external interference and shielding, where he argued for 2 layers of shield, copper and aluminum. Because they blocked different issues.

Most pickup shields don't shield the top or bottom of the coil. Also, any contact with the polepieces gets into inductance and eddy current issues. Shields definitely can impact tone, that's why Filter'Trons have the polepiece cutouts and gap in the middle of the top plate, despite it compromising effectiveness of the shielding.

I've played guitar near an old LCD monitors & TVs where I can't use non-humbucking setups, and even those are noisier than they should be, due to picking up garbage from the AC conversion and the fluorescent backlight. There was even a 52" LCD that I had to be at least 8' away from to avoid noticeable noise with a humbucker. If replacing and upgrading monitors wasn't a much cheaper and easier solution than fully multi-layer shielding all your instruments, their pickups, wiring, and controls...