Single Coil Hum on a Tele-like Guitar question

[walrus]

GGJ's post about his new T100D made me think of this. It may seem an obvious question but I have little experience with Tele type guitars.

I was drooling over an Anderson Hollow Classic T the other day, and was looking up info on it. Any sort of Tele I've tried - not many - has considerable hum with the single coils. I know if you take off the gain in the amp, it settles down quite a bit, and I know it is likely the middle position is hum cancelling.

I also know you can get "hum cancelling" single coils.

But given "standard" single coils, let me ask before I go somewhere and try it. If the gain is down, but let's say you then engage a distortion pedal or something like it, does the hum then return because of the pedal? Or is it only the gain control that causes the hum?

walrus

 

[Guildedagain]

The gain doesn't cause the [60 cycle] hum, it amplifies it.

Shielding if not done already.

Cleaner power?

 

[Walter Broes]

Shielding does work, and it's not a crazy amount of work on a tele.

 

[walrus]

The gain doesn't cause the [60 cycle] hum, it amplifies it.

Shielding if not done already.

Cleaner power?

So low gain on the amp then through a distortion pedal will not have much hum? i.e., the gain level is the issue not pedals?

Also, what do you mean by "cleaner power"?

walrus

 

[GAD]

Hum has a source, and it’s not the guitar. The guitar pickups are antennas and they might be picking up ambient noise from your environment. Fluorescent lights are one famous source. Ham radio guys also have an ongoing hatred of dimmer switches which also broadcast some obnoxious noise. Shielding will help with these.

If you have grounding issues in the power in the wall then your pickups will pick that up, too. Fixing your power or breaking ground loops will help here.

Lastly power can be “dirty” which means it’s being delivered in something other than a nice clean sine wave. This is usually more of a problem for things like computers that need clean power, but whatever the “dirt” is could affect what you’re hearing. I’d expect something different than the standard “hum” complaint, though. Expensive power filters can help here if you can’t resolve the source of the problem.

 

[schoolie]

Switch position 2 should be quiet, with a hand touching strings.

 

[Nuuska]

I have this idea - not for antique or collector guitars - but for working guitars - have a coil w 4-5 inch diameter and enough windings to provide about 10 times hum voltage compared to single coil pup. Then add big enough adjustable series resistor to it and connect it parallel w pup - out-of-phase humwise.

Result is a humbucking pup-circuit with as close as possible clean single-coil sound.

Because the extra coil w it's resistor has at least tenfold to hundredfold impedance and thus does not affect the sound of original pup.
Naturally that coil needs it¨s space somewhere inside the guitar - but like strat & tele - there is room under pickguard.

The idea of large coil diameter is that it will collect more hum than pick-up - thus needing higher series resistance to tame it down to equal level of the single-coil pick-up.

 

[Guildedagain]

The guitar pickups are antennas and they might be picking up ambient noise from your environment. Fluorescent lights are one famous source.

The neon sign in bars were blamed for some nasty hum experienced playing small time watering holes.

 

[walrus]

Within the rabbit hole of looking into this question, I found a lot of love for this pedal:



walrus

 

[GAD]

Hum debugger is a neat concept:

Hum Debugger / Hum Eliminator Pedal

Tape Op is a free magazine exclusively about recording music. Subscribe (yep, for free) at tapeop.com.

tapeop.com

 

[fronobulax]

Hum debugger is a neat concept:

When I was doing digital signal processing a standard technique with noise that was frequency specific was to generate a new signal that was just the noise, negate it and combine it with the real signal. This pedal sounds like a hardware implementation for on frequency. Pretty clever.

 

[Prince of Darkness]

I have this idea - not for antique or collector guitars - but for working guitars - have a coil w 4-5 inch diameter and enough windings to provide about 10 times hum voltage compared to single coil pup. Then add big enough adjustable series resistor to it and connect it parallel w pup - out-of-phase humwise.

Result is a humbucking pup-circuit with as close as possible clean single-coil sound.

Because the extra coil w it's resistor has at least tenfold to hundredfold impedance and thus does not affect the sound of original pup.
Naturally that coil needs it¨s space somewhere inside the guitar - but like strat & tele - there is room under pickguard.

The idea of large coil diameter is that it will collect more hum than pick-up - thus needing higher series resistance to tame it down to equal level of the single-coil pick-up.

A bit different, but a lot of Alembic guitars and basses have two single coil pickups with a "dummy" coil to provide hum cancelling