I've been tinkering again with a bag of P90's and an old guitar.
Some of you have seen my double cut triple pickup perversion posted elsewhere on this fine forum.
Well now I'll address an issue that I've been dealing with, hum.
The pickups that are in the guitar were stock Gibson P90s.
I found another P90 that when added in with the stock pickups, squelched most of the hum.
I added that one to the middle position, and wired it up with the neck & bridge pickups going thru the 3 way switch to one volume & tone pot, and the middle pickup to the other volume & tone pot.
Now with all three pickups on, everything was pretty quiet. The problem surfaced when I would turn down the middle or the neck & bridge set, the hum would increase as the pickup was turned down.
This is fine if you want all three pickups on all the way all the time, or combinations of neck & middle or bridge & middle on all the time.
If you turned both volumes down the same amount, the hum would also be squelched.
Gettin' complicated now.
This would not do...
So I did some research and armed my self with just enough information to make me dangerous and reckless.
The article that I referred to...
Dummy Pickup Coils for Single Coil Powered Guitars
So utilizing one of the pickups of a Precision Bass set,
I removed the plastic cover, ripped off the magnet and checked to make sure that the
wind direction was correct to achieve the hum canceling. Bingo! Quiet as a church mouse.
So I took this hapless little pickup and ground the square edges off one end and covered both sides with epoxy.
Then put a shrink wrap sleeve over the whole thing.
I hooked it up to engage with a push pull pot so that I would reap the most benefit from the addition.
It adds the coil between the output going to the jack and ground.
Everything fits nicely in the corner of the control cavity.
Now your probably thinking how is that idiot going to keep that coil from flopping around in that control
cavity? The cavity was getting pretty crowded now, I thought about a piece of stiff foam, but that would have
to be cut to the proper shape & thickness to work well.
So I searched for my answer from above... No I'm not getting religious on everyone.
Remember the plastic cover originally on the donor pickup?
It makes a good source of stock to make a nifty little angle bracket out of
that got epoxied to the underside of the cavity cover.
The cover fits on with no interference and no one sees anything from the outside of the guitar.
Now for a proper daylight picture of the conversion...
I just may add it direct so that the dummy coil is on all the time, but I thought the push pull would give me
a chance to compare the tone with and without the addition of the dummy coil.
If any of our more knowledgeable wiring and tone gurus would like to comment pro or con on this little
addition, I'd love to know your thoughts. Feel free to let me have it with both barrels.
Some of you have seen my double cut triple pickup perversion posted elsewhere on this fine forum.
Well now I'll address an issue that I've been dealing with, hum.
The pickups that are in the guitar were stock Gibson P90s.
I found another P90 that when added in with the stock pickups, squelched most of the hum.
I added that one to the middle position, and wired it up with the neck & bridge pickups going thru the 3 way switch to one volume & tone pot, and the middle pickup to the other volume & tone pot.
Now with all three pickups on, everything was pretty quiet. The problem surfaced when I would turn down the middle or the neck & bridge set, the hum would increase as the pickup was turned down.
This is fine if you want all three pickups on all the way all the time, or combinations of neck & middle or bridge & middle on all the time.
If you turned both volumes down the same amount, the hum would also be squelched.
Gettin' complicated now.
This would not do...
So I did some research and armed my self with just enough information to make me dangerous and reckless.
The article that I referred to...
Dummy Pickup Coils for Single Coil Powered Guitars
So utilizing one of the pickups of a Precision Bass set,
I removed the plastic cover, ripped off the magnet and checked to make sure that the
wind direction was correct to achieve the hum canceling. Bingo! Quiet as a church mouse.
So I took this hapless little pickup and ground the square edges off one end and covered both sides with epoxy.
Then put a shrink wrap sleeve over the whole thing.
I hooked it up to engage with a push pull pot so that I would reap the most benefit from the addition.
It adds the coil between the output going to the jack and ground.
Everything fits nicely in the corner of the control cavity.
Now your probably thinking how is that idiot going to keep that coil from flopping around in that control
cavity? The cavity was getting pretty crowded now, I thought about a piece of stiff foam, but that would have
to be cut to the proper shape & thickness to work well.
So I searched for my answer from above... No I'm not getting religious on everyone.
Remember the plastic cover originally on the donor pickup?
It makes a good source of stock to make a nifty little angle bracket out of
that got epoxied to the underside of the cavity cover.
The cover fits on with no interference and no one sees anything from the outside of the guitar.
Now for a proper daylight picture of the conversion...
I just may add it direct so that the dummy coil is on all the time, but I thought the push pull would give me
a chance to compare the tone with and without the addition of the dummy coil.
If any of our more knowledgeable wiring and tone gurus would like to comment pro or con on this little
addition, I'd love to know your thoughts. Feel free to let me have it with both barrels.
