Humbucker Hum

[dalandser]

Hello,

It's been a while since I posted anything here which probably means I've been doing more work on guitars and playing them than talking about it. Anyway, I have a Schecter 006 Elite with a s/h pickup setup with a Wilde Bill Lawrence L45 in the neck and a L500L in the bridge. I'm getting some hum when using it with my laptop with emulated amplifiers and equipment. Granted the settings are high gain (overdriven marshall with a dirt pedal in front - all emulated). There is usually hum with other guitars I've used with this setup, but the curious thing is that I'm getting more hum (volume) with the humbucker than with the single coil. Shouldn't the humbucker be relatively silent when compared with the "single" coil L45. The humbucker was coil split with the tone pot so I switched the tone pot and the output jack thinking it was something to do with either one of those, but same story afterward. I'm not sure if it's a grounding issue and I'm not sure how a string through guitar is grounded to the bridge (to one of the inserts for the TOM?). Also, when I press down on the strings and contact them to the frets there is more feedback and hum (even when barely touching the string to the fret). Is that supposed to happen? I'm sorry about all these questions. I don't have another guitar to take apart and experiment with right now and I need this one to play at church so I'm hoping someone can give me some good advice.

Have a great day,

Anthony

[Tim37]

Unplug your laptop my strat gets pissed if I have my laptop charger pluged in close to my guitar.

[dalandser]

Thanks for the response. I'll give that a try.

Have a great day.

God Bless,

Anthony

[bob123]

I know this is an "older" post, but I just want to clarify whats happening. What you're experiencing is called "60 cycle hum" (or 50 cycle if you are on the other side of the pond). Happens to be nefarious on flourescent lights with ballasts, computer screens, tv's, and in some older houses, the actual wiring in the house. If you listen to an overhead light, you can hear the "buzzing"/"hum" from it.

Humbuckers cancel the hum generated in the field they make (Same as two single coils with opposite windings). No pickup cancels out "external" hums, they actually will pick up the noise in proportion to their output (ergo, a humbucker becomes noisier then a single coil). The absolute best way to do this is to shield your pick guard and your guitar body with copper foil tape (best), graphite paint (expensive but easy), or aluminum (cheap fix). I'll spare the details on why this works, unless you wish to know that as well.

Cliffs Notes/ TL;DR : Shield your pickup cavity and your guitar body and the noise should be reduced drastically.

[KeithHowell]

Humbuckers cancel the hum generated in the field they make (Same as two single coils with opposite windings). No pickup cancels out "external" hums, they actually will pick up the noise in proportion to their output (ergo, a humbucker becomes noisier then a single coil). The absolute best way to do this is to shield your pick guard and your guitar body with copper foil tape (best), graphite paint (expensive but easy), or aluminum (cheap fix).

No! Humbuckers cancel external noise NOT generated in the field they make. The external noise is induced in both coils but is 180 Degrees out of phase and hence cancels!

This principal is used in may areas of cabling. Cable pairs are twisted together to achieve the same effect. Open wire telephone routes we used to see alongside roads and railway lines used the same principal, the two lines of a pair of wires were swapped in a regular pattern known as a transposition scheme to reject external induced hum, usually from nearby power lines.

Yes shielding is also good: stop the noise getting in before it causes trouble.

Keith