Humbucking vs. Humcancelling, difference?

[Phendyr_Loon]

Hello,
Just wanted to know the difference between a hum bucking pickup and a hum canceling pickup.
To me, I'd assume that hum bucking is to "buck" or reduce the hum and hum cancel is to totally eliminate it. Right?
Is a hum canceling pickup technically a hum bucking pickup too?

[walterw]

nope, two terms for the exact same principle, a pair of coils wound opposite and with opposite magnetic polarity, so they cancel the hum while not canceling any signal they both receive.

[Lesfunk]

same ting mon.

[Phendyr_Loon]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm trying the get an understanding of how pickups work and especially how the Suhr/Fender pickups on my Jazz Deluxe work.

There's two coils side by side, wrapped opposite polarity I'm assuming, in each pickup housing. Does this design constitute as a "humbucker" since only the four poles are wrapped together 2x2, instead of the common 8 poles wrapped 4x4?

[stflbn]

Word mumbo-jumbo to appease some who don't want humm, but also feel they can't use humbucker pickups.

[fettbass]

I've also seen the term 'phantom coil' used in conjunction with hum cancelling pickups. What does that refer to?

[Nedmundo]

Originally Posted by stflbn

Word mumbo-jumbo to appease some who don't want humm, but also feel they can't use humbucker pickups.

I think you're onto something. I usually see the term "hum-canceling" used for noiseless pickups trying to emulate single coils, as opposed to side-by-side humbuckers. The former are often different from side-by-side humbuckers, because each string is sensed by one coil instead of two, but they are humbuckers nonetheless.

[bassbenj]

Originally Posted by Phendyr_Loon

Thanks for the replies.

I'm trying the get an understanding of how pickups work and especially how the Suhr/Fender pickups on my Jazz Deluxe work.

There's two coils side by side, wrapped opposite polarity I'm assuming, in each pickup housing. Does this design constitute as a "humbucker" since only the four poles are wrapped together 2x2, instead of the common 8 poles wrapped 4x4?

There is a subtle point here. First the "humbucking" or "hum cancelling" part consists of two coils with one reverse wound. That way the hum induced in the first coil is "bucked" or "cancelled" by the SAME hum induced in the second coil. The hum is cancelled because the polarity is reversed.

Now there are two ways to proceed. You want to put in pole pieces to make the coils into pickups. One way is the P-bass method. You simply insert the poles and use one coil to pick up two strings and the other coil to pick up the other two strings. Since each pickup only picks up it's own strings you don't have to worry about polarity. Side by side jazz pickups are just a more compact version of this.

But there is also another way which is like a Jazz bass. In the case where each coil covers ALL the strings you can simply insert poles into ONE coil converting it into a pickup. You do nothing to the other coil and it only picks up hum. The second coil is not a pickup for the guitar and hence is called a "phantom" coil. "Stacked coil" Jazz "noiseless" pickups work like this.

And finally there is the usual dual coil humbucker mode which is also like a jazz bass but with two single coil pickups. As noted when you wind the coils with opposite polarity they buck hum (when both volumes are the same) but you also want the string signal to be in same phase when mixed. Since one coil is reversed that reverses the phase of the signal from the strings if you insert poles the usual way. But if you reverse the magnetic polarity of the poles on the reverse-wound coil that ALSO reverses the string signal putting it back in phase with other pickup. This is how a jazz bass works with single coil pickups and how the usual "humbuckers" (two jazz-like pickups but moved right up against each other (like a G&L or MM pickup)) work.

OK?

Of course this is only the basics. There is a lot of subtle "art" that goes into building a good sounding pickup that takes a lifetime to learn, but this is how "humbuckers" get rid of hum.

[SGD Lutherie]

Originally Posted by fettbass

I've also seen the term 'phantom coil' used in conjunction with hum cancelling pickups. What does that refer to?

A phantom, or dummy coil is a hum canceling coil that does not sense the strings.

On a regular dual coil humbucker, both coils are sensing the strings. Besides canceling hum, this also reinforces the lows and mids, and slightly attenuates the highs. Part of the reason is its sensing a larger area of the strings, and at two points, and also because the coils are more out-of-phase to higher frequencies, so they get cancelled. So humbuckers often have a fatter tone than single coils.

To make a hum canceling single coil, you can do several things. You can make a split coil, like a P bass or like the hum canceling Jazz pickups on the market, such as the DiMarzio Model J. The other polar method is to stack one coil on top of the other. The bottom coil will either sense very little of the strings motion, or none at all. When it's not picking up the strings, it's a dummy coil, because it does not contribute to the pickup's output. But it does cancel hum.

Dummy coils tend to make the pickup sound dull however, due to the added inductance and resistance. Some companies like Alembic, used two single coils for the string sensing, and a third dummy coil in the middle, and then electronically mixed the signals together. This prevents the dummy from having an impact on the tone.

Split coils sound like single coils because none of the strings is sensed by both coils. But they might sound a little different from a particular single coil of the same size, i.e. a Jazz pickup, because they are made from two smaller coils with different inductance specs.

Another less common method is to lay the two coils on their side facing the pole pieces. These are commonly called "sidewinders" and have been used by Gibson in the mudbucker, Bicentennial T bird, and Ripper bass, the last two designed by Bill Lawrence. He used them in a few of his pickups as well. Some Lane Poors were sidewinders as are Q-Tuners. I also make sidewinder pickups.

[JTE]

Part of the terminology stems from Gibson using the term "humbucker" as a proprietary name for their guitar pickups. And rock musicians being the sort who never let any real knowledge interfere with their beliefs, decided that a humbucker was the big pickup. So when people started making pickups that'd fit into a typical single-coil housing, they needed to market the hum cancelling properties without calling it a humbucker.

Of course, the split coil Precison pickup Leo Fender designed in '57 is a humbucker too. So as SGD says, the physical construction of the pickup doesn't determine if its a humbucker, it's the coil arrangement and the wiring.

John

[FunkMetalBass]

I usually think of a "humbucker" as a referencing a single pickup that has hum canceling properties.

However, the two are not exactly the same. For example, a pair of single coil jazz pickups are reverse wound and have reverse polarity. When both are full-on, they are hum-canceling. They are not humbuckers, though.

It's a subtle difference.

[SGD Lutherie]

Yes, Gibson used the word humbucker, which was previously used for chokes in amplifiers.

These days some bass players automatically assume a humbucker means a Musicman style pickup. But a P bass pickup is a humbucker, and was actually covered in Seth Lover's patent with Gibson. Fender got around that by getting his own patent based on the offset coils being used for tonal compensation, and not hum cancelation. Most soap bars are some type of humbucker, and all EMG "single coils" are stacked humbuckers. In this case they aren't single coils, but sound and look like them.

Humcanceling pickup and coil designs have been around for a long time in various forms.

[Stealth]

Originally Posted by SGD Lutherie

A phantom, or dummy coil is a hum canceling coil that does not sense the strings.

<plenty more facts ensue>

Would this post be enough to make this a sticky, mods?

[SGD Lutherie]

Originally Posted by FunkMetalBass

I usually think of a "humbucker" as a referencing a single pickup that has hum canceling properties.

However, the two are not exactly the same. For example, a pair of single coil jazz pickups are reverse wound and have reverse polarity. When both are full-on, they are hum-canceling. They are not humbuckers, though.

It's a subtle difference.

Right, they aren't a humbucker, but they do buck hum. It's the same principal but they are farther apart. If you stick them together in one case they would be just like a humbucking pickup.

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

"Humbucking" usually refers to a dual-coil pickup (one coil sensing the strings plus the ambient magnetic fields, and the other away from the strings to sense just the magnetic fields) set up to do its own hum field cancellation.

"Hum cancelling" as I understand it usually refers to two single-coil pickups wound in opposite directions. When their volume controls are set equally, the voltage induced by the ambient magnetic fields will cancel out and the signal produced by the string will come through.

Edit: FunkMetalBass got it before me!

[SGD Lutherie]

Originally Posted by Bob Lee (QSC)

"Humbucking" usually refers to a dual-coil pickup (one coil sensing the strings plus the ambient magnetic fields, and the other away from the strings to sense just the magnetic fields) set up to do its own hum field cancellation.

Here's a hum bucking pickup. Both coils sense the strings:



If one coil was away from the strings, it would either be a single coil with a dumb coil, or a stacked single coil.

"Hum cancelling" as I understand it usually refers to two single-coil pickups wound in opposite directions. When their volume controls are set equally, the voltage induced by the ambient magnetic fields will cancel out and the signal produced by the string will come through.

That's the same as the pickup seen above. The two coils do not have to be wound in opposite directions, but can be wound in the same direction, and then wired out of phase. The magnets have to be opposite.

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

I stand corrected on the side-by-side humbucker. I did have the stacked humbucker in mind.

"Wound in opposite direction" is the same as "wound in the same direction and wired out of polarity."

[walterw]

Originally Posted by FunkMetalBass

I usually think of a "humbucker" as a referencing a single pickup that has hum canceling properties.

me too.

Originally Posted by FunkMetalBass

However, the two are not exactly the same. For example, a pair of single coil jazz pickups are reverse wound and have reverse polarity. When both are full-on, they are hum-canceling. They are not humbuckers, though.

no, but technically, at that point they are a humbucker.

[walterw]

Originally Posted by Phendyr_Loon

Thanks for the replies.

I'm trying the get an understanding of how pickups work and especially how the Suhr/Fender pickups on my Jazz Deluxe work.

There's two coils side by side, wrapped opposite polarity I'm assuming...

oddly enough, not quite.

the suhr/fender jazz pickups (the ones with the big single magnets) are actually made with the two coils having the same magnetic polarity, and one coil just wired backwards.

that cancels both the hum and (normally) the output, but since the two coils never sense the same string, the sound isn't really affected.

there's even a metal "claw" underneath that contacts all the magnets and grounds them, to keep the flipped coil from making a bunch of noise when touched.

i can only guess that making them "normally" (with a pair of straight-up RWRP coils per pickup) didn't sound quite right.

[SGD Lutherie]

Originally Posted by walterw

i can only guess that making them "normally" (with a pair of straight-up RWRP coils per pickup) didn't sound quite right.

The problem with the split coil Strat pickups that have opposite polarity magnets is you have a volume drop when you bend a string from one coil to the other. The reason is that the strings become magnetized, so you are bending a North magnetized string over the Sound pole, etc.

P bass pickups don't have that issue because the coils are farther apart.