No hum with your favorite single coils

Pickups, wiring schemes, switch techniques and onboard active electronics for guitars and basses
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Goop_buster
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Post by Goop_buster »

You now there is actually a pretty good solution to this.

You can keep your favorite "real" single coil passive system and get rid of the hum with almost zero trade off of the original sound of the pickup .

The solution is patented and not sold separate but there is no (legal) problem with playing around with the same basic concept and build your own personal system for your own guitar.

The hum cancelling system is active and takes hum from a smaller coil and injects this hum at the same level (actively amplified)with the oposite phase which cancels out the hum. If battery gets low you can still use the guitar as usuall...only the hum gets back.

Check out the patent here

Silent SC patent

Click images and go to page 3 if you want a basic idea o f it and not want to read the text.

There is also a passive system (Suhr) which uses passive coil with the same turns area as the regular pickup . By using a much larger area for the dummy-coil than in the pickup the number of turns is kept lower and the inductance gets low enough to not inflict so much degradation on the original single coil sound. Stacked SC and systems like kinman with small coils do not work transparent enough because of this. However, the active system is a way better solution.

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Post by bajaman »

Thanks - I will check it out :wink:
bajaman

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Post by JHS »

A buffer with a tuneable notchfilter to cut out the 50/60Hz hum, is a good solution too and works well.

JHS

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Post by soulsonic »

I stuffed couple copper scouring pads into one of my guitars. It did a suprisingly good job.

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Post by modman »

Isn't this what EH sells in a box as Dehummer?
Would this work in a pedal elsewhere in the chain?

but 9V to dehum my guitar :?

Proper shielding of the pickup cavity and stargrounding the guitar should kill all the hum. I shielded my strat with kitchen brand aluminium foil and it's dead silent even when you don't touch the strings.

Shielding photo essay

Contrary to pedals, you have to pay alot of money if you want to buy a guitar that is properly grounded.

:cry:
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Goop_buster
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Post by Goop_buster »

Well shielding goes a very long way to improve things and is ofthen enough in stage or rehersal situations but today many guitarists find themself sitting in small home studios half a meter from studio gear (or in worst case an old CRT screen) with the guitar pickups pointing directly against some hum sources. "Real" single coils (I do not count in stacked types and such here) will pickup hum in such situations beacuse of their construction ...unless you make a complete faraday´s cage around them (which would prevent them from picking up the string movement also :lol: )

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Post by koulis »

Thanks a lot man :D

Cheers

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Post by Aharon »

I have sealed shielded single coils(pasive) in my strat and I get no hum/buzz till I'm 1 foot away from any source.
Dead silent even with hi gain amps.
Aharon

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Post by matt239 »

Goop_buster wrote: ...unless you make a complete faraday´s cage around them (which would prevent them from picking up the string movement also :lol: )
I don't think it works like that.. :)

- The pickups are sensing the strings magnetically. Non-ferrous shielding should have little/no effect on this. This is how humbuckers with covers work. The covers have little/no iron in them. I think some aftermarket singles have shielding in the cover, & it should be possible to do this to any Strat-style p/u cover, using foil or shielding paint.

Good topic.

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Post by bajaman »

the link in the first thread of this topic is NOT correct - it takes you to some electronic autoharp thingie - 128 page patent too :roll:
Here is the correct link: :wink:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Pars ... ie+ball%22
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Post by RnFR »

looks neat, but I'm still going to try this-
soulsonic wrote:I stuffed couple copper scouring pads into one of my guitars. It did a suprisingly good job.
:D
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Post by matt239 »

soulsonic wrote:I stuffed couple copper scouring pads into one of my guitars. It did a suprisingly good job.
?? ! :shock:

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Post by bumblebee »

soulsonic wrote:I stuffed couple copper scouring pads into one of my guitars. It did a suprisingly good job.
Kluge'D! :mrgreen:
I so dislike the modern digital world that I need to use semi-digital effects to emulate the analog world of cassette, VHS, and vinyl.

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Post by Syrus1312 »

JHS wrote:A buffer with a tuneable notchfilter to cut out the 50/60Hz hum, is a good solution too and works well.

JHS
I was always thinking the same thing, just filter the complete frequency out of the guitar spectrum. :)
Hum gone. I think that a guitar in standard tuning, wouldn't miss a thing when doing this. :lol:
Seeing that a bass and drums fill these up nicely.
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Post by JiM »

Syrus1312 wrote:
JHS wrote:A buffer with a tuneable notchfilter to cut out the 50/60Hz hum, is a good solution too and works well.
I was always thinking the same thing, just filter the complete frequency out of the guitar spectrum. :)
Hum gone. I think that a guitar in standard tuning, wouldn't miss a thing when doing this. :lol:
Seeing that a bass and drums fill these up nicely.
The thing is, most hum is not pure sinusoidal wave, it's distorted. Therefore it has harmonics at multiple of the 50/60Hz root frequency, well into the "sensible" audio range. Filtering all of those won't get easily unnoticed. And filtering just the root will help, but will leave many annoying frequencies.

Denoising is really a tough topic, because of the same random nature of noise and information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatio ... nformation
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Post by ansil »

a little background on my solution, being a big metal head not many know i am a big SRV and Hendrix fan as well as a strat aficionado. i have been toying with a simple circuit that i have been using in my guitars for years. currently i am not at liberty to put up the schematic as its undergoing certain legal things but the jist of its quite the same.

single coils pick up quite a bit of hum due to the sensitivity of the coil.
most of the time the hum is only a real issue when not playing or playing very low.

most strats now have a "modern wiring" with the middle coil reversed.

by simply building a peak detector you can use an active circuit to monitor the guitars signal and tune the threshold of the the s/n ratio. using a ldr or some other electronic switch of such nature you can couple the output of the guitar back to the middle single coil effectively turning on the middle coil when the last sustaining notes are dying out it simply blends in the middle pickup as the noise picks up.

the end result is a weak humbucking pickup but its great for when you are just walking around with the guitar in between songs no fancy switching to worry about just set and forget and play as soon as you hit the first note the middle coil drops out. you can also do a similar thing with one of the other pickups so the middle coil is not left out. it sounds quite complex but really its not. I was explaining this to my former guitarist the other night and he had no idea what i was talking about till i showed him on my guitar [my guitar also has leds to show when the pickups are active.] keep in mind this is completely passive the output signal you steal from your guitar is only for monitoring and controlling.

i hope this helps out some of you its quite an easy circuit and can be implemented in so many ways if you have access to smd then its as easy as fitting it on the back of a pot

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Post by JiM »

ansil wrote:by simply building a peak detector you can use an active circuit to monitor the guitars signal and tune the threshold of the the s/n ratio. using a ldr or some other electronic switch of such nature you can couple the output of the guitar back to the middle single coil effectively turning on the middle coil when the last sustaining notes are dying out it simply blends in the middle pickup as the noise picks up.
So it's basically an enveloppe-controlled pickup switch (or blender). :thumbsup
ansil wrote:keep in mind this is completely passive the output signal you steal from your guitar is only for monitoring and controlling.
It seems to me that the circuit is not passive ... You would need some high-impedance buffer (like a JFET) to isolate the peak-detection circuit from the signal path, and both of those will require some kind of power. Once you have a battery in you guitar, you may want to actually use an active buffer, like the one from Don Tillman, to run long cables without tone-sucking.
ansil wrote: currently i am not at liberty to put up the schematic as its undergoing certain legal things but the jist of its quite the same. [...] till i showed him on my guitar
Maybe a gutshot is still possible ?
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Post by ansil »

The detection circuit is active of course but there is a
Way to do it passive still working the kinks out of that one

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Post by ansil »

bajaman wrote:the link in the first thread of this topic is NOT correct - it takes you to some electronic autoharp thingie - 128 page patent too :roll:
Here is the correct link: :wink:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Pars ... ie+ball%22
cheers
bajaman
neither one of these links in this thread is correct unless

1. we are talking about chemical organization and or a polymer coating on the guitar string.
2. i a m using a different internet than everyone else???????????????

anyone just got a straight patent no. so i dont' have to instal quick time on my computer

oh and jim yeah next time i crack open my strat i will photo it for you but be forewarned i only crack it open for two reasons
1.if something breaks or
2. i break a string lol which i guess is technically under point 1

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Post by JiM »

ansil wrote:oh and jim yeah next time i crack open my strat i will photo it for you but be forewarned i only crack it open for two reasons
1.if something breaks or
2. i break a string lol which i guess is technically under point 1
:slap: I forgot that everything is front-mounted in a strat. All my axes have an electronic cavity accessible without removing the strings.
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