Single coil hum is making me hate my steel

Paddy Long · Post by **Paddy Long** » 6 Mar 2010 5:04 pm

Apart from my very first Shobud 6139, I have played thru humbuckers exclusively for over 30 years - but I went with Trutones in my 08 Zum Hybrid and surprisingly (or not) I have had no issues with hum with this guitar at all... I use it in the studio a lot and believe me the engineers would be on me in a flash if there was an issue. I do use George L's and a Goodrich LDR2.
So maybe I'm just a lucky bugger but this guitar just does not have any hum ...my other Zum has Alumitones just in case I strike a gig in a Hummer !!

Joe Alterio · Post by **Joe Alterio** » 7 Mar 2010 9:08 am

My Zum came new with TrueTones....but they hummed. And I wasn't too crazy with the tone. I fell in love with the steel after I put a Lawrence 710 in it....no hum, GREAT tone. I tried a couple other major humbuckers as well...but they didn't come close to the George L.

James Morehead · Post by **James Morehead** » 7 Mar 2010 9:22 pm

Tony Prior wrote: When you finally get on that ONE stage , you will know what I ( we) are talking about. When the HUM is louder than the audio coming out of the amp-------------------------------------------------I would say however, that this was probably one of 2 or 3 stages over 3 or 4 decades that could not be handled. Most were tolerable. But, you just never know.

Not trying to rock the "hum-bucker boat", and meaning no disrespect, but it's going to take more than a couple bad gigs in 40 years of playing to make me install a humbucker. And if that happened, I'd reinstall my singlecoil when the gig's done.

99% of the players with singlecoils will never experience such a "room from hell". I sure wouldn't panic and throw out a single coil because a couple folks snagged a worst case scenario twice in 40 years of gigging. That does not make sense.

The single coil is fine under--should we say--99% of any situation? Wire it up right with proper grounding and don't look back------Bask in the tone.

mike nolan · Post by **mike nolan** » 7 Mar 2010 10:31 pm

Actually,

Years of bad gigs in NYC. Not every gig, not every room, but probably at least 25% of the gigs... out of 150 or so gigs a year. Often, these are one night, one off, pickup gigs with singer songwriters that hire a bunch of guns for their big NYC gig. If you get a rep for having gear issues, you won't get these gigs. I didn't jettison the single coils without spending a considerable amount of time and money to find a workable solution. I have single coils in my studio guitars, because I love single coils, but I always take the HB equipped guitars to the gig. I wish it was different. I would encourage any player to try to find a way to use whatever pickup that they want, often there is a way with shielding, grounding, cabling, orientation of the guitar on the stage, etc. I have tried it all, with no consistent good result. One of these days I might look into having a guitar built with a single coil and a humbucker.

Jeff Hyman · Post by **Jeff Hyman** » 7 Mar 2010 11:30 pm

I lean toward James and Ians reply. There's a sweetness with the single coil on a Sho~Bud that gives it that Sho~Bud sound and tone. I played (and still own) a beautiful Sho~Bud Professional. When I played a room where hum was present, I tried a different outlet then the other guys equipment was plugged into. The best luck was when I plugged one of the amps (I have always played in stereo) using one of the grey adapters that had the ground removed.

Today I play a LDG. A good UPS will take care of 99.9% off any hum issues.... at least for me. I have had great success with the Monster. Many prefer Furman.
http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-MON-PRO2500-LIST
http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-FUR-M8DX
HumX was useless IMHO.
http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-EBT-HUMX-LIST

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 8 Mar 2010 3:43 am

James Morehead wrote: Not trying to rock the "hum-bucker boat", and meaning no disrespect, but it's going to take more than a couple bad gigs in 40 years of playing to make me install a humbucker. And if that happened, I'd reinstall my singlecoil when the gig's done.

99% of the players with singlecoils will never experience such a "room from hell". I sure wouldn't panic and throw out a single coil because a couple folks snagged a worst case scenario twice in 40 years of gigging. That does not make sense.

The single coil is fine under--should we say--99% of any situation? Wire it up right with proper grounding and don't look back------Bask in the tone.

It's not a question of you MUST do this , doesn't much matter to me at all, I prefer single coils as much as the next guy.

The problem is you don't know when the room from hell will all of a sudden be the next steady gig which pays nice money.. I played this particular room for almost two years steady which elevated it from low priority to main priority. We played maybe 50 or 60 gigs in this room over that period. We still have an open invite to come back which we most likely will do very soon.

We even changed the PUPS in a couple of Telecasters just for this room, added Noiseless ( kind of a stacked HBucker , which helped a bit but not completely.

Wiring it up right ? What does that mean ? The issue is floating in the AIR , lights, dimmers etc..If wiring it up right was the cure then we would not even have this thread...again.

Perhaps 99% of players will never come across a room like this but if and when you do, wiring it up right will not be a solution. The PUP is picking up interference in the air, it's not coming from cords or the amp or bad wiring on the Steel. The interference is BEFORE THE PUP, not after. The entity is waiting for you on the stage.

I'm sharing my own experience , I'm not telling anyone what to do. I only own 1 Steel , I use it for all gigs and the few sessions I get.
So, after installing the HBuckers, I don't have to look back, the Steel is not just an Instrument but a tool and now I don't really concern myself with rooms or dimmers, or wiring. and the E66/10:1 pups sound just fine. I still get paid

It seems some are arguing here, this is not an argument, it's information.

over and out.

James Morehead · Post by **James Morehead** » 8 Mar 2010 8:47 am

Tony Prior wrote:
Wiring it up right ? What does that mean ? The issue is floating in the AIR , lights, dimmers etc..If wiring it up right was the cure then we would not even have this thread...again.

Tony, I totally respect your experience, and I'm sorry if I added confusion. I didn't mean to imply that in your situation, Tony, you didn't wire your guitar right. And you are totally correct in what you did and the results you achieved. Anyone of us would be wise to follow your footsteps , if we were to encounter the "room from hell". Most players are fortunate enough to never have been there, thus the comment--don't panic.

What I mean by wiring it up right, THAT in itself can be a leading issue why some guitars hum with a single-coil, and the originator of this thred did not indicate much detail of his hum situation, so alot of assumption is happening. There are ways that work great, and ways that are ot so great, and then also sometimes the "room from hell" happens. My comments are more for the first two concepts. And these ways really don't mean anything if you encounter the "room from hell". Again, I have total respect for Tony.

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 8 Mar 2010 10:08 am

Don't worry James, you still rock !

It's gonna take a lot more than this for me to fall off the cliff!

t

James Morehead · Post by **James Morehead** » 8 Mar 2010 10:14 am

chris ivey · Post by **chris ivey** » 8 Mar 2010 10:27 am

i have owned at least 5 steels over my 40 year steel time all with single coil stock factory pickups. aside from an occassional hum from 'obvious' rheostat problems or poor funky wiring in an old building i have not had problems. certainly not enough to worry about changing out pickups. so i don't understand the issue here. recording has never been a problem. how widespread is this phenomonen that causes all of your expense and gear change-out hassles?

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 8 Mar 2010 1:26 pm

chris ivey wrote: how widespread is this phenomonen that causes all of your expense and gear change-out hassles?

probably slim to none.

I personally would not have made any changes had it not been a club booked for a steady gig where we stayed for almost two years on and off. Almost 40 years of playing gigs and I can count on one hand the number of real bad stage scenario's.

But, the question of this thread is, what do I do if I run across that scenario ? Because at that time all the statistics don't matter, you are now part of the statistical equation.

It doesn't much matter if the tire company says only 1% of the owners get a flat tire, if you get the flat tire the other 99% don't much matter.

Dave Manion · Post by **Dave Manion** » 8 Mar 2010 1:36 pm

I got a solution, don't play in NYC. Go play in the country, where the steel belongs. Oh wait, that's real bad advice, you can get some DIRTY power playing off a diesel generator! Not to mention, when the guy who owns the flatbed gets drunk and decides to drive home without telling the band, who is still playing on the back!

No seriously, I guess my point in the above comment is: you never know what the gig will bring, city or country, and if having a humbucker helps alleviate some unneeded stress and that outweighs any dissatisfaction with your tone, go for it! The rest of the comment is just joking around, steel belongs everywhere.
Dave

mike nolan · Post by **mike nolan** » 8 Mar 2010 3:00 pm

The original poster was concerned with hum issues. My answer is "Do what you have to do". I went to HB pickups cause that's what worked for me. The OP should be aware that the multiple solutions for reducing SC hum may or may not work. With luck, some solution will be fine. Problem solved.

Also, I do actually like original 705s in some of my guitars, maybe a touch more than SC pickups for some applications. I play a 335 and a Telecaster when I'm doubling on 6 string, and I like 'em both.

Finally.... large old East Coast cities are generally worse when it comes to bad wiring. Add to that all of the RF junk flying around in the air from cell phones, cab radios, wireless broadband, wireless DC battery chargers, etc and things can get pretty ugly.

Martin Vigesaa · Post by **Martin Vigesaa** » 8 Mar 2010 4:43 pm

Basic shielding will do a good job at preventing electric fields from causing hum/buzz. I find the much more difficult problem is with Magnetic fields. These can penetrate non ferrous metals easily. This includes shielding we use like copper, aluminum foil, etc. You can completely wrap your pickup in aluminum foil or copper and it will still pickup magnetic fields. Magic cables and hum eliminators won't work for this type of hum.

You basically have to prevent the noise from getting into the pickup or use a hum cancelling pickup. Preventing the hum from entering the pickup would involve modifying or removing or moving the source of the problem. This could involve replacing electrical wire with twisted type or placing wire in steel conduit, moving power transformes, etc. Usually not an easy option.

Option 2: (which doesn't work) Magnetically shield the pickup. You can't magnetically shield the pickup because you would have to shield the entire pickup to stop the magnetic fields, including the top which picks up the strings. This would prevent the pickup from picking up the strings of your steel.

Option 3: Sheild your whole guitar. This would work but you would basically have to put yourself and the guitar in a big steel box and run the cable out a small hole to you amp.

Option 4: Cancel out the hum. Often when I play electric guitar in a noisy room i'll tilt and turn the guitar to cancel out some to most of the hum. The problem with steel is the tilting part.

A little test I do if I have a hum coming from my amp is turn the volume pedal all the way off. If the noise is still there, It has nothing to do with the pickup and is more likely a ground loop, noise in the power line, or some noise generated by a piece of equipment in my signal chain.
If the noise goes away, then I know the pickup is simply picking up a magnetic field and usually there is not much I can do about it in any quick fashion.

Here is a good short article about 60Hz EMF:

http://emiguru.com/kgb/03fall.pdf

Dave Manion · Post by **Dave Manion** » 8 Mar 2010 4:52 pm

Mike, I think most of us can understand why NYC would be more troublesome EMF etc. wise. I can only imagine what the wiring and surrounding conditions would be like in some of those clubs in buildings that have been around for well over the century mark. Combine that with our love for wireless technology and you got a frustrating condition. The places I play, it's usually just the neon sign on the back of the stage that needs to be turned off and "voila!". I agree, find what works and go with it!

Brian McGibney · Post by **Brian McGibney** » 31 Oct 2011 10:24 pm

Well guys, so far the best solution has been the ehx hum dbuuger. Very little tone suck and damm near dead quiet studio performance

B

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 1 Nov 2011 8:34 am

Jeff said

I lean toward James and Ians reply. There's a sweetness with the single coil on a Sho~Bud that gives it that Sho~Bud sound and tone. I played (and still own) a beautiful Sho~Bud Professional. When I played a room where hum was present, I tried a different outlet then the other guys equipment was plugged into. The best luck was when I plugged one of the amps (I have always played in stereo) using one of the grey adapters that had the ground removed.

Doesn't sound like you are talking about the same thing. Using two amps WILL usually give you a ground loop hum. Lifting the ground on one of your amps will help. But, using one of those grey adapters is not the safest thing to do. You would be doing yourself a favor if you invested in a HumX for one of your amps. It takes care of the ground loop without eliminating a ground on your amp, which is a lot safer.

Rich Peterson · Post by **Rich Peterson** » 1 Nov 2011 8:51 am

If the humbucking p/u has four wires, plus ground, you can restore the single coil sweetness by wiring a capacitor across one of the coils. Start with a small value and go up until you get the sound you want. It retains most of the hum cancellation.

It works by reducing the phase cancellation of the high harmonics. I'm happy with the h/b sound of my MSA Classic, but I use this trick on my fretted guitars that have humbuckers.

Chris LeDrew · Post by **Chris LeDrew** » 1 Nov 2011 9:50 am

I have a traditional single-coil Sho~Bud style pickup in my Jackson Pro IV. Yes, it has the hum, but on live shows it is not an issue. When I'm not playing I usually have my VP ducked anyway. And when I'm playing, the steel itself is louder than the relatively low hum. If the hum overpowers your steel, there must be a larger issue with your pickup. I had a '60s Bud and the pickup hum was LOUD. Definitely unmanageable. They must have been microphonic.

If the 60-cycle hum were a make or break situation, all Teles and Strats would be long gone from guitarists' hands. Admittedly, you CAN shift around with a regular guitar and find that spot to duck the hum. Not so easy to pick up your steel and swivel around on your chair.

The studio is a DIFFERENT story. I've had some challenging situations. A good engineer can eliminate it through various means, especially these days. A bad engineer cannot. I am considering a humbucker steel for recording reasons, to eliminate the negative potential altogether when I do a session. But overall it hasn't been THAT huge a deal.

Bent Romnes · Post by **Bent Romnes** » 1 Nov 2011 10:25 am

My place is notorious for hum. I believe the culprit is a humming transformer about 200' away. I have wound a few sc pups and have reached the conclusion that hum is due to 3 factors: your surroundings, shielding of the pickup and the 60 cycle hum.(from bad transformers for one thing)

I tried a Truetone sc a while ago and it actually hummed more than my own ones did. It was wound to 17.5 K
So I figured, what if I wind them not quite as hot...say in the 13K to 15K range. I tried that and it made a vast improvement.It showed me that the hotter the pickup, the more potential for hum. The 14K range still gives you the tone and volume.

The 14.5K pup was installed in the guitar I brought to Norway in August. Not a trace of hum there, with their electrical system of 240V, 50 HZ.

Steve Lipsey · Post by **Steve Lipsey** » 1 Nov 2011 2:58 pm

I've had a thread running here for a while on hum (called "odd amp input circuit mod" in the electronics section) and by the end of the thread it became clear that my Trutone was fine with a low gain input amp and awful with a high gain input....for hum, whatever happens at the input stage is what you hear, it seems....and cutting the input gain has the same effect as winding it lower, I'd think... (that might not be completely true, I 'm not sure)

So you can use your hot single coil if you tame the amp input...I used a Brad Sarno suggestion of clipping the input tube grid cap, combined with dropping a resistor to ground across the plug coming in from the steel. Now it is no problem, and the hot, high gain amp is as low hum as the low gain amp..

And both of those mods are either switchable or unpluggable, so I have a lot of choice...

http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=213319 for the whole story...

Richard Sinkler · Post by **Richard Sinkler** » 1 Nov 2011 6:25 pm

Just an added tidbit. I had purchased a Made in Mexico Tele and the hum was louder than the output signal (even with shielding the cavity as recommended on the forum). This was in my apartment. I changed those out to EMG Active pickups (Humbuckers) and it made the guitar playable. I sold the guitar to my guitar player, and out of 3 Tele's he has, this is now his "go to Guitar" because of no hum and killer tone.

Steve Ahola · Post by **Steve Ahola** » 1 Nov 2011 7:04 pm

Another solution to single coil hum: add a dummy coil. I did a lot of experiments with dummy coils in 2005 and here is an article on wiring one up to the P90 pickup in my Les Paul Jr:

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/articles/ ... isited.pdf

Since 2005 there have been significant advances in dummy coil technology, in particular the Suhr setup for strats that had the dummy coil mounted on the trem cover (on the back of the guitar). Here is a link to the patent for that:

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/misc/pate ... iachki.pdf

With the Suhr setup they use a smaller coil with a heavier gauge wire than would be used in a pickup. One of the complications is finding a place to mount the dummy coil (it needs to be parallel to the pickup for it to cancel the hum). In a regular guitar or a lap steel there is often no room to mount a dummy coil in the control or pickup cavities. However, for pedal steel guitar that should not be a problem. I'll have to give it a shot with my 1972 Sho Bud Pro and see how it works!

Here is a sound sample of a dummy coil I put in a strat back in 2006 as I recall. I play a little bit with the dummy coil off (the hummy parts) and then I play awhile with dummy coil on before switching to the next position in my Sup'rStrat wiring harness:

http://soundcloud.com/sssteeve/dummy-coil-strat

To my ears the dummy coil does add a little bit of compression to the sound, but I do think that it retains the character of the single coil sound.

Steve Ahola

P.S. Here is a link to my 1997 article on the Sup'rStrat wiring harness:

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/articles/ ... _strat.pdf

Jim Robbins · Post by **Jim Robbins** » 1 Nov 2011 7:35 pm

Brian McGibney wrote:Well guys, so far the best solution has been the ehx hum dbuuger. Very little tone suck and damm near dead quiet studio performance

B

Glad to be of help. An engineer at Studio 92 in Toronto used one when I was getting all kinds of crazy hum with my normally reliable Twin & Sho-Bud -- after that I went out & bought one & while it isn't necessary a lot of the time, it is a lifesaver when you need it. With a single coil six string you can move around until you hit a dead spot but it's a bit trickier with a pedal steel.

Dave Zirbel · Post by **Dave Zirbel** » 1 Nov 2011 8:22 pm

Another remedy would be to get Stringmaster style dual pickups with a blend knob. You can have single coil or humbucker when you need it, just with a twist of the knob. Jason Lollar builds 10 string Stringmaster pickups with the blend knob.