jp
Senior Member
I was wondering if anyone has tried Ilitch Noiseless Wiring on any of their single coil guitars? I'm planning on giving it a try with my M-75 Aristocrat eventually.
Anyone tried Ilitch Noiseless wiring?
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Never heard of it so went to their website where I gave up after a few minutes because I couldn’t find any pictures of what the system entails aside from some wiring diagrams. One of the descriptions says something about a PCB and another says something about a “low impedance air coil” mounted to the backplate of a Strat and it all seems kind of snake oily at first glance. It could work great and I’m just being curmudgeonly, but I’d be more inclined to just buy a noise gate.
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OK so now that I'm off my phone I see their desktop site is a little easier to navigate.
It looks to me like all of the solutions involve adding a pre-shaped coil either to the control cavity or the cover plate, and they all look like they're pre-formed to the intended shape. Here one for a vintage Les Paul:
They will apparently also do custom jobs if you can measure your available space.
It seems like it could be an interesting design, but it also seems expensive and I would question if proper shielding can't accomplish the same thing. My biggest beef is that I don't see any technical explanations of what it's claiming to do. Watching the demo videos I feel like I can accomplish the same amount of hum or hiss cancelling using my MXR smart gate pedal.
It could be the greatest thing ever, though. I look forward to you installing it and letting us know!
It looks to me like all of the solutions involve adding a pre-shaped coil either to the control cavity or the cover plate, and they all look like they're pre-formed to the intended shape. Here one for a vintage Les Paul:
They will apparently also do custom jobs if you can measure your available space.
It seems like it could be an interesting design, but it also seems expensive and I would question if proper shielding can't accomplish the same thing. My biggest beef is that I don't see any technical explanations of what it's claiming to do. Watching the demo videos I feel like I can accomplish the same amount of hum or hiss cancelling using my MXR smart gate pedal.
It could be the greatest thing ever, though. I look forward to you installing it and letting us know!
Walter Broes
Enlightened Member
I'd read about it in the context of studio players with strats and racks and all kinds of other stuff I'm not particularly interested in, so I shrugged and forgot.
But then last week I saw Matt Munisteri online praising it and saying how much he loves it, and he's the kind of player I love and am in awe of - and he plays vintage Gibson archtops with Charlie Christian pickups and P90's into vintage or vintage style amps, and I have to admit it got me semi-interested.
That said - I play single coil pickups almost all the time, and almost never run into real problems with hum, so...
But then last week I saw Matt Munisteri online praising it and saying how much he loves it, and he's the kind of player I love and am in awe of - and he plays vintage Gibson archtops with Charlie Christian pickups and P90's into vintage or vintage style amps, and I have to admit it got me semi-interested.
That said - I play single coil pickups almost all the time, and almost never run into real problems with hum, so...
jp
Senior Member
It seems like it could be an interesting design, but it also seems expensive and I would question if proper shielding can't accomplish the same thing. My biggest beef is that I don't see any technical explanations of what it's claiming to do. Watching the demo videos I feel like I can accomplish the same amount of hum or hiss cancelling using my MXR smart gate pedal.
It could be the greatest thing ever, though. I look forward to you installing it and letting us know!
The idea behind it is essentially just to wire a single dummy coil into the harness to mimic a humbucking circuit. It then just makes the whole setup noiseless. Ilitch discovered this and then helped Suhr develop a system for their guitars, which are attached to the backplates.
It's a pretty easy process for a Strat harness. One just needs to take an extra single coil pickup, take out the magnets, wrap up the coil to prevent shorts, and then replace the wire from the first lug of the volume pot to the 5-way switch. Then you just need to hide the coil somewhere in the harness that's stabile.
This wire is replaced with the two leads from the extra dummy coil and voila--instant noiseless humbucking but retaining the same signal qualities of the single coil setup. Here's a video of someone mocking it up.
I imagine the Ilitch system is an electronically condensed way of doing this, but it can simply be done with any spare single coil winding or pickup.
Apparently, a lot of people are doing this with P90 guitars too.
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Nuuska
Enlightened Member
Hello
I proposed this same idea about ten years ago to a guitar builder - unfortunately he thought it was not necessary - while 99% of his customers played music where dynamic problems were no issue.
One thing to concider about it though - while a single dummy pup is quick solution for single-coil humming - there's a problem involved.
- If we take a single-coil pup wo magnets and insert it into circuit - it halves the source impedance when connected parallel - and halves the output by 6dB if connected series - thus change of sound.
- solution - make a large coil w as many wounds as possible for given cavity - this will have two effects - first - the impedance of the coil will be larger than the impedance of the pup - second - the output is many dB more than the output of the pup, due to large area. Finally we add large-enough series resistor to match the voltage difference - and the bigger the resistor - the less is the effect of parallel-connected coil to total impedance.
Years back when I had this idea - I thought of cutting round cavities behind every pup - naturally this would've made the back of the instrument look funny w covers, unless there were a pretty total covering.
I proposed this same idea about ten years ago to a guitar builder - unfortunately he thought it was not necessary - while 99% of his customers played music where dynamic problems were no issue.
One thing to concider about it though - while a single dummy pup is quick solution for single-coil humming - there's a problem involved.
- If we take a single-coil pup wo magnets and insert it into circuit - it halves the source impedance when connected parallel - and halves the output by 6dB if connected series - thus change of sound.
- solution - make a large coil w as many wounds as possible for given cavity - this will have two effects - first - the impedance of the coil will be larger than the impedance of the pup - second - the output is many dB more than the output of the pup, due to large area. Finally we add large-enough series resistor to match the voltage difference - and the bigger the resistor - the less is the effect of parallel-connected coil to total impedance.
Years back when I had this idea - I thought of cutting round cavities behind every pup - naturally this would've made the back of the instrument look funny w covers, unless there were a pretty total covering.
jp
Senior Member
Interesting, Nuuska. I have read that in some cases with a dummy coil, about 10% of the noise is still present.
I wonder how well the actual Ilitch system works vs the single coil hack, and if he was able to address the issues you mention above?
I wonder how well the actual Ilitch system works vs the single coil hack, and if he was able to address the issues you mention above?