My Nordstrand Big Splits aren't hum cancelling...

[ctmullins]

Guys,

Big Splits come with three conductors - signal hot, signal ground, and a shield ground. So it’s not possible to wire the two halves in phase or out of phase. The coils are hardwired together from the factory. And I doubt Nordstrand screws that up.

Black and gray go to ground, white is hot. If your gray wire isn’t grounded, that would negate the noise reduction provided by shielding.

The discussion about coils being in or out of phase is not pertinent here.

 

[kgbeast]

Other thing to point out is that if the cavity is not shielded, some buzz and hum can happen even with full on humbuckers and actives. I recently bought a stingray copy with the full humbucker and it was buzzing like a single coil until I shielded the cavity and the pickup pocket.

 

[micguy]

Other thing to point out is that if the cavity is not shielded, some buzz and hum can happen even with full on humbuckers and actives. I recently bought a stingray copy with the full humbucker and it was buzzing like a single coil until I shielded the cavity and the pickup pocket.

Nordstrand puts a piece of adhesive copper on the bottom of Big Splits, which grounds the pole pieces. Additional shielding done right won’t hurt, but the way Nordstrand does this, their pickups are very insensitive to electrostatic fields, even without additional cavity shielding.

Also, cavity shielding does nothing to fix electromagnetic hum, which is what we’re talking about when talking about 5 string pickups not completely cancelling hum.

To be truly quiet, a pickup needs to be hum cancelling and well shielded - they are two separate issues. Hum cancellation does not fix electrostatic issues, and all the shielding in the world will not help with electromagnetic hum.