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Humcancelling J's

#21
"Willing to sacrifice a bit of single coil to get rid of the hum........"

There it is. Is the slight loss of something no one has yet been able to define worth putting up with the hum?
I guess that depends on where you play. If studio time is in abundance then you can move around to avoid sources of interference. On stage you may not be able to.
I had to swap my single coil active soundhole pickup for a stacked humbucker after spending a morning busking with my guitar pointing out into the street and standing side ways looking down the street. I looked like a twit and lost the ability to work half of the 'crowd'. That cost me money.
The problem was a mains cable above my head used for the Christmas lights. I barely noticed a difference in tone once I got into the music.
Do you get a lot of noise issues or is it more a theoretical problem?
 
#23
parallel will just weaken them, not much point.

(unless, that is, you want to try running the two pickups in series with each other for a boosted, almost P-bass kinda tone. in that case, wiring them individually parallel keeps things clear and mud-free.)
 
#24
This could get confusing.....
A humcancelling single coil is actually a humbucker so therefore can be wired such that it's two coils can be wired either in series or parallel. Most humbuckers are wired in series but you can get a brighter sound by wiring in parallel.
A jazz bass with single coils is wired so that both pickups when on full are wired in series in relation to each. This gives a slight cut in the deep lows but plenty of bright growl.
If a jazz bass is modified such that those pickups are now in series, then there will be a thickening of the low mids along with a slight loss of highs and and a noticable boost in overall output.
This means that your noice cancelling buckers could be wired either series or parallel in regards to themselves but also in regards to each other.
You could have each pickup wired in parallel for a more single coil like tone yet still have a modification so that you get both pickups on in series. You could do the opposite or combinations of.
I hope this helps anyone getting confused?
 
#26
End to end means that there are two coils in a line rather than on top of each other as in a 'stack'. These are the only two options for fitting a humbucker in a single coil jazz bass rout. Most ( if not all) noise cancelling single coil style pickups are in fact humbuckers. They get the single coil sound to some degree by still having the narrow magnetic pickup pattern or 'window' of their single coil dimensions. Unlike a side by side pickup which senses over a wider area of the strings and therefore has some cancelling of the high frequencies.
 
#28
rubbadubdub said:
This could get confusing.....
A humcancelling single coil is actually a humbucker so therefore can be wired such that it's two coils can be wired either in series or parallel. Most humbuckers are wired in series but you can get a brighter sound by wiring in parallel.
A jazz bass with single coils is wired so that both pickups when on full are wired in parallel in relation to each other. This gives a slight cut in the deep lows but plenty of bright growl.
If a jazz bass is modified such that those pickups are now in series, then there will be a thickening of the low mids along with a slight loss of highs and and a noticable boost in overall output.
This means that your noice cancelling buckers could be wired either series or parallel in regards to themselves but also in regards to each other.
You could have each pickup wired in parallel for a more single coil like tone yet still have a modification so that you get both pickups on in series. You could do the opposite or combinations of.
I hope this helps anyone getting confused?
Click to expand...

I think you meant to say a J-bass with single coils has them wired in parallel, so that changing to series fattens things up.
 
#35
#36
rubbadubdub said:
I did say that nedmundo:-)
Click to expand...

No, what you actually said was this:

rubbadubdub said:
A jazz bass with single coils is wired so that both pickups when on full are wired in series in relation to each. This gives a slight cut in the deep lows but plenty of bright growl.
If a jazz bass is modified such that those pickups are now in series, then there will be a thickening of the low mids along with a slight loss of highs and and a noticable boost in overall output.
Click to expand...

I presume that nedmundo corrected your post when he quoted it and underlined his corrections. Most of us knew what you meant but the correction was good for those who may have been confused.

I don't think the tonal differences between stacked and split coils have much to do with the sensing area. They are more to do with the fact that the stacked coil's second winding adds inductance without generating any extra Voltage. The inductance in series with the signal works against any stray or cable capacitance to produce a lower cutoff frequency than a single coil would have in the same situation so stacked coil pickups tend to sound a little darker. In a split coil pickup both coils are active and since they both have less area than the coils in a single or stacked coil pickup the inductance is similar to that of a single coil. Traditional humbuckers sound like two single coil pickups in series or parallel because that is what they are although they are two single coils right next to each other so the sound won't be the same as you get from two single coils at the Jazz bass spacing.

Ken
 
#37
khutch said:
I presume that nedmundo corrected your post when he quoted it and underlined his corrections. Most of us knew what you meant but the correction was good for those who may have been confused.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's right, and my apologies for not explaining my edits, especially when we're all trying to clarify things and seem to be on the same page! :D
 
#39
I am also lucky enough to have the Fender SCNs in a J bass. With the T.I. flats - the sound is incredible. However, they are surely "darker" than the stock pups.

Anytime you add that second coil for canceling, the inductance of the pickup is roughly doubled, so the entire frequency response is changed. It seems that some makers can compensate for this a little better than others, but I doubt it can sound like a single coil.

I did see an article about someone making a super small low-inductance coil that would combine with the pickup so that it would hum cancel without affecting the sound, but haven't seen anything of it lately.
 
#40
khutch said:
I don't think the tonal differences between stacked and split coils have much to do with the sensing area. They are more to do with the fact that the stacked coil's second winding adds inductance without generating any extra Voltage.
Click to expand...

Yes, plus the stacked coils are out of phase with each other. So they produce a thin bright tone with less output. To make up for that they are usually over wound. It's common to see them in the 24k range. While that increases the output and low end, that also changes the tone.

Stacked pickups work best if you actively add the two coils, the way EMG does.

Another trick which has emerged with some guitar pickups is to give the lower coil a lot less turns of wire, and often with larger gauge wire (to lower the resistance) and then increase the inductance in the lower coil so it's more sensitive to hum.

I haven't seen that used on bass pickups yet, except for the Fender N3 pickups which have a large steel plate between the upper and lower coils.
 

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