I hate single coil hum...The tone, as fab
as it is, was not worth that damn hum!
And no mere shielding gets rid of it - nothing
short of mu metal or other mag field deflecting
stuff encapsulating the coil can stop it.
(yes, shielding is great and stops lots of things
noisewise and should always be done)
I knew Alembic did stuff with phantom coils
to cancel out the noise, so I worked up a ckt
for the Guild to do the same thing - I installed
the raw coil from a disassembled P90 guitar
pickup (cheap, and nicely small/shallow) you take
off everything - all metal/magnets screws,and
just use the bobbin coil wrapped in copper foil.
I wanted a design that was minimally invasive
no battery door in the back, no massive enlarging
of the control cavity. So that meant a single 9v
battery and a small ckt board. I routered a small
cavity about an inch away from the Guild pickup
towards the neck well under the guard about a
half inch deep. The coil fits nicely and feeds the
2 input FET preamp, one input is the Guild pickup
the other is the dummy (phantom) coil. the
two signals get summed and balanced to cancel
the hum part of the signal from the guild (which
is the only thing in the signal from the dummy
coil) that signal goes to a bipolar transistor
setup as an emitter follower to give you a nice
low output impedance. There are MANY ways
to execute such a ckt to be sure
Then - replace the pots with 25k pots and you
are good to go.
You can always use a coil directly under the Guild
pickup (would be the ideal location) if you prefer
to router down and then rework the supports for
the guild single coil over it. I also took the Guild
pickup out of the cover, and wrapped it in copper
foil to get the best noise reduction. I dremelled
the edges of the bobbin(CAREFULLY and just a lil
bit) to account for the foil and not to have to
force the cover on over it!
To tell the truth, it was this - or just router the
crap outta the thing and put in a Music Man
Stingray - style pickup
But I figured it was best for posterity to keep it
"Guild".
Oh, the other thing that should be done - unless
you put in a battery hatch in the back - is
to replace the pickguard woodscrews with brass
inserts and 4-40 machine screws! The mahogany
of the Guild is soft and after a few removals of the
guard the woodscrews start to get pretty loose.
I can take the guard on and off indefinitely now
with no issues
Or you will have
