The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm talking about the fact that today's single coil pickups don't hum an awful lot that I can tell. I'm told that humbuckers are virtually essential for recording. But Sol Ho'opi'i didn't have humbuckers. And neither did Leon McAulliffe in the early days. Jerry Byrd did alot of recording without them. I have a Chandler Studio 6. The single coil setting does NOT hum audibly at the volumes I play. So please tell me. Why Humbuckers?

I personally prefer single coil pickups, but there are some very good sounding humbuckers out there for those that do have noise issues in their playing environment.
There are some situations where even the best single coils with a properly shielded guitar just don't cut it.

In most instances, you shouldn't expect excessive hum with single coil pickups.
However, there are exceptions.
I remember, at one time, setting up outside for a kind of garden party and I must have been sitting directly over a power cable. The hum was soooo bad I couldn't hardle stand it!

Turn up the volume of a high-gain amp with a single coil and you'll hear some nasty buzzing. Lots of people have recorded with noisy pickups, you just find ways to mask or minimize the offensive sounds.

Also, single coil and humbucking pickups are two different animals. One generally has a happy, chimey, bell like tone and the other a thicker smokier tone. I like to use each for different purposes so I need both.

I play in a lot of local bars, and I have to say that the "electrical environment" is worse now than it was years ago when I was in college - also playing bars , thus, I need humbuckers more than ever. Used to be the main problems were poor electrical grounds, neon lights and dimmers. But now we've got computers, Wi-Fi, and other digital noise generators all around us in addition.

Personally I prefer the sound of single-coil p'ups, so I've got noiseless single coils in my Strat, and I just installed a single coil sized split-rail humbucker in my Tele. I plan to do the same to my SX lap steel soon. Yes, yes I know they don't sound quite the same as a "true" single, but they're a lot closer to it than a humbucker, and I don't have to live with the buzz and hum (the buzz is worse!)

I've run into too many environments (including my own house) where I can't use a single coil pickup in a lap steel, so a hum-canceling pickup is a necessity.

The odd part is, if I flip the steel up to "regular" guitar position, the hum goes away -- it isn't a shielding problem, it's a problem with the Earth's magnetic field. I intend to write my Congressman about it.

Peter

My last build, I decided to have both on the guitar. I used a three position switch (single-both-humbucker)I have a tone and volume knob.It took a bit of trial and error to figure out where the tone knob setting was for each pickup.I have both a tube amp and solid state and have spent time finding which one works the best.The Peavey 30 tuber with a Black Box seems to work good.This set up lets me do Blues and and when I play with country friends, I can get a tone that works for both pretty easily.