Noiseless Pickups

Nola

Well-known member
hey guys.
I'm going to be playing live soon, and I worry about noise since I play all single coil guitars and venues are all different.
What are my best options? I've read that noiseless pickups suck tone. Is there truth to this? What would the logic be? Seems they're just wired with a dummy almost acting like a humbucker, so why would that suck tone?
I've read up on HumX (seems hit and miss from the reviews) and other products. That might help with amp hum/ground loop, but it just doesn't seem reliable from the reviews I've read. My primary is a jazzmaster, so the larger area of the pickup makes hum even more annoying. I can cancel it mostly by putting the pickups in the middle position, but I like the neck pickup tone best.
 
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Noise gate pedal might be your best bet to keep your tone as is. Sometimes using a direct box (using instrument out) can help.
 
HumX is a waste for a problem caused by the pickups, IME.

In a live situation, the noise is almost never a problem. Unless it's a church, perhaps, where I ended up switching to a LP from a Tele because of old wiring and it was a quiet venue, of course. Anything else in a typical live venue, nobody will notice. If they do, then I'd say your guitar has a problem. I mean, I don't see Bill Kirchen switching from a Tele for *any* venue. IOW, I wouldn't go changing up anything until you find yourself booked for a couple weeks in one place that has an unacceptable problem and pays enough to cover the swap. And then I'd try some used sets, because you might not like it anyway.

Noiseless pickups do tend to cut a little off the very top end. As you said, it's essentially a kind-of humbucker design, so any signal generated in phase in both pickups gets canceled. This is 100% effective on signals coming in via EMF, but it also is going to remove frequencies that happen to be generated in phase because of the pickup location and pitch. Will it bother you? Who knows. It really depends on the sound you are used to playing with, whether it's going to bother you. Without making any modifications to your rig (pedals + amp and all their settings), it's easy to just say they suck tone, but that's mostly laziness. Turn up the treble, add a buffer, etc. A little tweaking can go a long way, and in a club, nobody is going to hear the difference, except it won't be buzzing. Not saying they aren't different, but good noiseless pickups can be every bit as nice as regular single coils or rails or humbuckers or whatever.

I put noiseless pickups in my jazz bass, but not because of live use, but because of recording. I can't tell the difference for the little bit I do.
 
The venues are just quiet open mics, and there would be no drums to hide the noise is the thing. Otherwise in a full band I'd agree. But in these venues I think it would be audible. I might just suck it up and use the middle position, which does buck the hum on Jazzmasters, even though I don't like the tone as much as the neck pickup (it gets a little "glassy" in the middle position).
 
Why you playing electric guitar with no drummer?
Sounds more like it should be an acoustic gig.

Anyway, I still stand by "don't worry about it"

To paraphrase The late great Keith Moon, "they only remember your entrance and exit"

I seriously doubt anyone in the audience will come up to you after the show and say "dude, great show......except you had single coil hum"
Unless they're a guitar player, who most likely wouldn't really have been listening, but was instead saying to himself how he could have done better. :D
 
Why you playing electric guitar with no drummer?
Sounds more like it should be an acoustic gig.

Anyway, I still stand by "don't worry about it"

To paraphrase The late great Keith Moon, "they only remember your entrance and exit"

I seriously doubt anyone in the audience will come up to you after the show and say "dude, great show......except you had single coil hum"
Unless they're a guitar player, who most likely wouldn't really have been listening, but was instead saying to himself how he could have done better. :D

Good points!

As to why electric: I have several good electric guitars and zero good acoustics, so I'm going with the guitar that's easier to play. I also never liked the singer/songwriting thing as small venues. Makes me feel too old and lame like Kris Kristofferson or something! Haha

I'll just leave it as-is but use the middle position that I don't like the sound of as much. That is the best compromise with regard to $.

Thanks!
 
Ilitch Electronics PGNCS-T |

Bit drastic ^? But a possible solution. Ref the point about humbuckers being "dull"? Not only because of the phase cancellation but also the much higher impedance. I have read that most buckers are wired in series (to get the hottest signal) but can usually be wired in parallel and "buck" just as well but since impedance is halved, "top loss" should start about an octave higher.

There is of course the SD "Hot Rails" where the coils are co-axial and should be pretty zingy?

Oops! H Rails are not it seems co-axial but are still very much closer together than a regular bucker and so should suffer less HF loss. (I see no reason why the buck coil could not be below the active one except it would require some routing of the guitar body. )

Dave.
 
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Ilitch Electronics PGNCS-T |

Bit drastic ^? But a possible solution. Ref the point about humbuckers being "dull"? Not only because of the phase cancellation but also the much higher impedance. I have read that most buckers are wired in series (to get the hottest signal) but can usually be wired in parallel and "buck" just as well but since impedance is halved, "top loss" should start about an octave higher.

There is of course the SD "Hot Rails" where the coils are co-axial and should be pretty zingy?

Oops! H Rails are not it seems co-axial but are still very much closer together than a regular bucker and so should suffer less HF loss. (I see no reason why the buck coil could not be below the active one except it would require some routing of the guitar body. )

Dave.

Cool, thanks.
Does wiring a humbucker with 1meg pots result in less top end loss and more clarity, too?
 
Cool, thanks.
Does wiring a humbucker with 1meg pots result in less top end loss and more clarity, too?

Bit of an oxymoron that! LESS top end will result in LESS "clarity". In theory the higher the load (more Ohms) on a pickup the less HF will be lost but. Amplifiers are rarely higher than 1 meg and cable capacitance will probably dominate.

If you want to preserve maximum top, have a buffer 2meg+ on a foot of cable from the guitar. The other benefit is that the (now lowZ ) cable will be much less likely to pickup hum or taxis and phones!

Dave.
 
Sorry, I worded the question strangely. What I mean is normal humbuckers have 500k pots (e.g. a Les Paul), but if you put in 1meg pots, that same humbucker pickup should allow more top end through and thus perceived clarity, correct?
 
In theory, perhaps. Yes, it's fairly common to switch out 250k for 500k when you put a humbucker in a guitar that previously had single coils, and some do put 1M into very high output humbucker rigs (something I've avoided), but more than those instances, to me, seems like the "over-weening obsession" (as someone once described it) with aspects of tone that have nothing to do with what listeners hear, or perhaps more aptly, care about.

Spending hours poring over pot/resistor/cap values and tolerances and then soldering (often badly) these minor things in and out of guitars vs. practicing is probably a tradeoff I doubt most of the masters of the instrument have chosen.

My "logical Monday" morning grump is now complete. Thanks for your time :).
 
I like to both practice guitar and coax the best tone I can get, though. Even if an audience can't hear it, I can, and get joy when the sound matches what I want.
 
Just play your favorite guitar with your favorite pick-up selection and if it's noisey, just turn it up louder! Have fun!

What amp will you use? I suggest once you are plugged in, before you get your lips close to the mic just put one hand on the guitar strings and ever so quickly brush your other hand across the mic to be sure you are not going to get bit (electrocuted). You can't be sure of the grounding issues you may run into, and this looks cooler than puting a meter across the mic to ground or whatever.

When you walk up there all electric and shit, people are going to expect to hear something radical, after listening to all the acoustic cats.

Mostly, have fun!
 
Just play your favorite guitar with your favorite pick-up selection and if it's noisey, just turn it up louder! Have fun!

What amp will you use? I suggest once you are plugged in, before you get your lips close to the mic just put one hand on the guitar strings and ever so quickly brush your other hand across the mic to be sure you are not going to get bit (electrocuted). You can't be sure of the grounding issues you may run into, and this looks cooler than puting a meter across the mic to ground or whatever.

When you walk up there all electric and shit, people are going to expect to hear something radical, after listening to all the acoustic cats.

Mostly, have fun!

Good tips, Einstein. Thanks for that entertaining post.
As for the amp, I only have one, but it's a goodie ('62 princeton brownie). Love that amp!
 
Rather surprisingly, if you put 3Henries (as a middle value inductance) and 500k into a calculator the response is flat to well beyond guitar amp speaker frequencies.

The inductive reactance of 3H coil at 3kHz, about where we perceive "clarity" is only 56.5k Ohms and so loading that with 1 meg or 500k is going to make sod all difference.

But. Guitar wiring is fiendish and the interactions with cable (and amp) capacitances not really amenable to calculation.

Suck it and see!

Dave.
 
I would just go and play what I had and wouldn't sweat it on the pickups

Yup. :D the boy's gonna drive himself nuts.

This being a recording forum, people get a bit anal struggling over minute things like boosting 2k ......but only by a half a db! Can't go a whole db that will ruin the mix! Lol. :D

Point is this; don't let your recording persona take over in a live playing situation. Remember, it's a performance, not a mixing session.
And don't get into this madness of "if my sound isn't just right, I won't be able to perform my best". Heapload of rubbish!

Get the songs across and play for the audience!

Okie doke, I'm done (steps off soapbox)
:D
 
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