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Single pole pickup noise?!

J

jz75

Nov 11, 2011
29
0
#1
This sounds weird but I thought I'd ask. After playing for years with a Seymour Basslines P pickup as quiet as can be, I put on a set of Neon strings. After plugging in again, I had significant noise when my thumb made contact with the E string pole only. Is this mere coincidence after playing the bass fine the night before for 3 hours with an old set that this happened? Or are these neon strings made of some weird element?

I've seen threads about noisy pickup fixes but if you have any have seen a single pole get noisy or affected by string, please let me know. Thanks!
 
#2
It probably has nothing to do with the strings, however, they might not be grounding your hand as much because of the coating.

It's possible that the coil wire has shorted to the pole. If the inside (start) of the coil is connected to hot, you will hear a noise when you touch the pole.

If there is only one pickup on the bass, you might be able to stop the noise by reversing the hot and ground wires from the pickup. This will move the hot to the outside of the coil and the ground to the inside where the pole is.
 
#5
jz75 said:
This sounds weird but I thought I'd ask. After playing for years with a Seymour Basslines P pickup as quiet as can be, I put on a set of Neon strings. After plugging in again, I had significant noise when my thumb made contact with the E string pole only. Is this mere coincidence after playing the bass fine the night before for 3 hours with an old set that this happened? Or are these neon strings made of some weird element?

I've seen threads about noisy pickup fixes but if you have any have seen a single pole get noisy or affected by string, please let me know. Thanks!
Click to expand...

This is pretty common. The string coating is what made you notice the problem (but it was doubtless there before). The reason is that the strings were grounding you out so you didn't introduce noise into the pole. With the coated strings you were no longer grounded.

The PROPER way to build a pickup is to ground all the poles. But for some reason few makers seem to bother. Hence if any pole is touched by a hum source (you) it injects hum right into the coil of wire. (a wire shorted to pole also does this as someone noted but a short is not necessary to get some hum) Since yours only does this on one pole it probably means that all poles were originally grounded and the E pole has somehow lost it's ground connection.

The fix is to ground all poles:

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If it turns out you've got a short the pickup may quit if you do this. In that case you may need a new one since in your case you can't reverse the wires. I'm guessing just making sure all poles are grounded will do it.
 
#7
yeah, i bet it's the strings as well.

you hardly ever touch a pickup pole without also touching the strings; when they're not coated, they ground your fingers like they should, so touching the poles doesn't make much noise.
 
#9
bassbenj said:
If it turns out you've got a short the pickup may quit if you do this. In that case you may need a new one since in your case you can't reverse the wires. I'm guessing just making sure all poles are grounded will do it.
Click to expand...

He can reverse the wiring on both of them.

Grounding the poles should fix it, unless there is a short to the pole, in which case that might short the pickup winding to ground.

If that's the case, making that end of the coil ground will fix that also.
 

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