Tested both pickups out of the bass as pictured. Hadn't tried before as you said in one of your posts that it didn't need to be out of the bass. Nonetheless, the hum remains.
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Summoning Elite Troubleshooters
- Thread starter Crosscheck67
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- 60 cycle hum emg emi ground hum
Post a video showing the test setup as pictured and the noise in question lets check it out
I don't think you've changed everything all at once, but rather did it piecemeal.
Don't have one, and I have no idea which one to try. Active? Passive? Plus, I'd like it to be a potential replacement if I'm going to spend the money. I've been listening to demos of other jazz pickups. So many out there. But I'm pretty sure I need it to be one of the hum cancelling ones like the Aguilar 5J-HC, or I expect to run into the same problem.
New to forum. Please advise if I'm misstepping.
Symptom:
I'm at wit's end trying to kill a 60 cycle hum in my bass I had built last summer. It's been there from day one. I've spent several months speaking with different manufacturers, all who have provided great support (EMG, Audient, Source Audio, Furman, etc). I arrive here as a last ditch effort. I'll spare you the entire history unless you ask for it. Believe it or not, this is the distilled version.
My bass is built around custom woods from Warmoth, 2TEK Bridge, and the electronics are as follows:
EMG J5 Active Pickups (although they are technically single coil, EMG says they are hum cancelling)
EMG BTC System Active Preamp
Double battery box, 7/8" jack and copper shielding from Warmoth. I did not realize at the time that shielding isn't needed with EMG.
Pig Hog braided patch cables.
The hum presents itself whether I'm playing through my Auident iD44, EBS Magni 500 2x10, Pedalboard with several Source Audio effects, or even just my Vox Amplug with headphones. It can be heard anywhere as I rotate in a 360 degree circle, save for two spots polar opposite of each other.
The fact that this same thing happens with the little Amplug just screams environmental (Clue #1?)
The bizarre thing is that it doesn't happen with my son's Ibanez FR700, or his Tobias Toby Deluxe IV, both active basses. What really kills me is that I went to a music room at the college my friend works at. We both plugged into my Audient, my bass hummed, and his Jazzmaster with passive single coils was quiet. What? How? (Clue #2?)
The point of this bass was to be a nicer version of the one Mike Lull (RIP) built for me in the 90s, which has since been stolen. Granted that was 25 years ago and electronics were American built. I'm now in a small New England town which is extremely crowded with old, crappy infrastructure compared to Seattle. Bad power could be cooking the air.
I took it to my luthier who built it. He tried rewiring the electronics, changed signal chain order, tried wiring the batteries both in serial and parallel, no difference. The one time we were able to have it quiet was plugged into an old giant Fender head and cab from the 60s (Clue #3?)
Before I had tested with the Vox Amplug, I bought a Furman PL-Plus DMC. No difference. The lion's share of troubleshooting has been with EMG:
They had me test each pickup independently, bypassing the Blend and BTC, No difference.
They had me change the signal chain order, no difference.
They had me rip out the shielding, no difference.
They had me send all the electronics, jack, battery box and patch cable I was using and they threw them on their bench. No hum. (Clue #4?)
They sent everything back along with some extra shielded coaxial cables and asked me to ground to the 2TEK Bridge, no difference.
I then visited a highly recommended electronics and amp wizard who's been running a shop with his luthier for 25 years. The noise did not significantly present itself at their shop, either in their amp or in my Amplug (yes, I brought it along). So we reached the conclusion that it is truly environmental. They also explained that the shielding was doing nothing, as it wasn't grounded.
SO. I ordered more shielding from Warmoth, took everything out, re-shielded the control & battery box cavities, and reinstalled everything. As EMG is mostly solderless, I can easily connect/disconnect the bridge ground. I also grounded the jack to the shielding. It sounds slightly better with the bridge ground disconnected, yet the hum still remains.
The conclusion I've sort of reached is that for whatever reason, my setup is highly sensitive. Yet I don't understand how I haven't found a way to shield it from the alleged environmental noise, and how - in the same environment - my son's low and midrange basses are quiet, as is my friend's Jazzmaster. This was supposed to be my dream bass. I've moved well past anger and am now just quietly defeated
Thanks to anyone who spends time on this thread.
Greetings,
When you used your son's bass, same signal chain and chords, etc. Correct?
Can you isolate the circuit you are on currently? By isolate, I mean just your bass on it, NOTHING else. No lights, devices, etc.
Surprised the new shielding NOW connected home ground did not help.
Lighting used to be a problem with fluorescents especially. Ballasts have a pretty high % of noise that can be picked up by other devices.
Now, with the new LED lighting there are different issues with that same ballast distortion, and I do my best not to use them near my music area.
Good idea, but it sounds like he did that already. It was suggested earlier to secure all home circuit breakers except the one powering the amp. Also to unplug/disable anything else on that remaining circuit. From post 71, "...I killed the power to my entire home, plugged my Vox Amplug into my bass along with headphones, and walked from back to front towards the power lines out front. The hum grew worse the closer I got to the power lines."
Yeah you have! Can you disassemble/reassemble it blindfolded yet?
Thanks for testing the connection between the ground pins and component cases to verify they're connected.
As a rule, it's best to avoid two different ground paths, even in passive basses. Some folk run a wire across the component cases (yours is equivalent with the case being internally connected to ground) and also secure their components to the cavity shield at the same time. Not recommended, as their should only ever be one ground path. Best practices is use one or the other grounding method. Might be why EMG doesn't recommend cavity shielding.
So, with the readings you took plus the shielding that's still installed, you verified you have two paths to ground. With some of the components being powered, the possibility for ground loops exist, compounded by being connected to a powered amp.
Anyway, despite the blathering above, there's a way to keep the shielding while disconnecting it from component cases. Learned this awhile back to avoid that possibility. Super easy, barely an inconvenience. Cut away a bit of shielding around each component hole. This keeps the cavity shielding disconnected from the component case ground.:
Besides disconnecting the parallel ground paths in your bass, the cavity shielding still provides a protection for the internal wiring between components. In other words, while your individual components may be protected, your wiring is still open to the impingement of outside interference, which you have an over-abundance of.
As such, I'd probably shield the pickup wiring channel and pickup cavity to protect the remaining unprotected wiring. As time in your life permits.
Is this a cure for your ills? I'm thinking "no", but we might get lucky. However, this would remove an unknown possibility.
I've gotta go back and refresh myself on the pdf's I downloaded for your system and internalize the troubleshooting you've recently done. You can't quit now...I'm emotionally involved LOL.
Edit: Just looked up what a Vox Amplug is. It's battery powered. You killed power to your entire house, didn't you? No "keep one circuit alive for your amp" needed. Excuse my ignorance on that point LOL.
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Loving the candor! Appreciate your "investment"Yeah you have! Can you disassemble/reassemble it blindfolded yet?
Thanks for testing the connection between the ground pins and component cases to verify they're connected.
So, with the readings you took plus the shielding that's still installed, you verified you have two paths to ground.
Cut away a bit of shielding around each component hole. This keeps the cavity shielding disconnected from the component case ground.:
As such, I'd probably shield the pickup wiring channel and pickup cavity to protect the remaining unprotected wiring. As time in your life permits.
I've gotta go back and refresh myself on the pdf's I downloaded for your system and internalize the troubleshooting you've recently done. You can't quit now...I'm emotionally involved LOL.
Edit: Just looked up what a Vox Amplug is. It's battery powered. You killed power to your entire house, didn't you? No "keep one circuit alive for your amp" needed. Excuse my ignorance on that point LOL.
Close to being blindfold capable; I'm half way there. I can easily rip everything out.It is correct that I killed power, walked the length of the house using the Amplug, and tested each breaker individually to see if anything had any impact on the noise. Nothing causes it other that the power lines out front.
In it's current state - no pun intended - it's not grounded. So we're only dealing with EMG's internal grounding.
I already did something similar to the "cutout" trick; I made little donut shaped insulators out of electrical tape, just cause I had a hunch the pots shouldn't touch the shielding. But your suggestion will be in my next round of testing. Also on page 2, I believe the diagrams are there.
I'm still trying to give the non-shielders room for their suggestions while I have nonexistent/nonfunctioning shielding. If nothing works, I'll be going all out on shielding everything. Truth be told, I soooo don't want to do it.
There are two basic schools of thought with regards to noise and tone. One is exemplified by my guitar playing friend who has said to me regarding 60Hz hum, "That's the price of good tone." (He plays a strat with single coil pickups.) I represent the other school of thought which says "good tone plus unwanted noise = crappy tone."
It sounds to me like you're in that second group. If that's the case, you might want to expand the tonal range of hum canceling pickups you might be happy with just a bit. It's usually easier to tame a slightly-too-bright pickup than it is to unmuffle a slightly muffled pickup.
Don't bother with the battery box cavity. That gains you nothing. Speaking for myself, I did shield the pickup cavities (all three of them) on my bass as well as shielding the control cavity. I also shielded the wire holes between the control cavities and the pickup cavities using some copper tubing, made sure everything was soldered and electrically connected, and then that was connected to ground. So my entire signal is protected from the pickups to the jack. (Some might say that shielding the holes connecting the pickup cavities to the control cavity is overkill. I won't disagree, but I didn't want to skip that step, and then experience noise, and then wonder if I was experiencing that noise because I didn't do that extra step.)
My bass has always been utterly quiet, even in electrically noisy bar environments. FYI, I have Fender Super 55 hum canceling pickups, in my opinion the best pickups Fender ever made. (Why the heck did Fender quit making them?) The dual-inline-coil design is one used by many pickup makers, so I'm confident you could find something similar if you want. Or you might luck out and find a set of Super 55s.
Most preamps are designed to work with passive pickups. The EMGs are different, it's more of a pickup-&-preamp package deal. I think your instincts are right on this -- get hum canceling pickups. If you want an active bass, you'll probably need a different preamp as well.
For what it's worth, my bass is passive, and I have always been very happy with its tone and output.
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Indeed I am. I'm after a warm jazz tone, which EMG delivers beautifully...or at least they used to in the 90s. Because there so many more frequency bands in the air since then, I don't feel I have a choice to get anything but hum cancellers. El murdoque suggested Aguilar. I checked them out and they have split coil jazz models. They have preamps as well, but not as functionally cool as EMG. That's not a dealbreaker, just a bummer. In the end it's all about tone. My favorite bassist is a Portland jazz guy named Sandin Wilson. The tone I'm after can be heard in his live version of Candlelight. I play lots of different stuff, but I reference that song for clearly hearing the tone I want.
That is some pleasant listening. I was in San Diego in the '80s, and there was a great jazz station on the radio that played stuff like that a lot.
Unfortunately, I'm the wrong guy to tell you what pickup to get to chase that particular tone. I think you could probably get that with the Fender Super 55's because they are seriously versatile pickups, if you could find them. But I think you're on the right track pursuing split-coil J pickups. Different companies make different flavors of them, and they will help with the noise issue.
I forgot about using electrical tape as an insulator. Duh. Just went right to the most destructive method of the two. Sorry 'bout that.
For the diagrams, I'd downloaded the pdf's from EMG at the start. You have your own folder on my desktop LOL.
Great video. As isolated as you can get. Just spitballing here, but I wonder if there's a way to wrap your test setup as much as you can in something conductive and use the jack for grounding the wrap. Maybe a spare metal container you could stick it in, grounding the container to the jack. Or just go ahead and shield the pickup wiring channels and pickup cavities. Ain't nothin' wrong with complete shielding on any bass. Just slower and more hassle than the wrap or metal box idea for a quick test.
'Cause what I see here with the test setup is unshielded wiring and pickup. Same as when those components are installed on the bass with pickup cavity and pickup wiring channel being unshielded. Like I said, just spitballing. Maybe read that as "just getting desperate" LOL.
Just curious and referring to the video, is the hum level the same with those components in and out of the bass? You mentioned "the hum remains". Just wondered if it's the same level.
Read this thread, had to pipe in saying - damn dude that sucks.
Try another set of EMGs? Would the 4 string JX set work for your spacing? I have basses with EMGs, Bartolinis, Nordstrands, Aguilars, MMs and live in a noisy environment but am able to cut out all the noise. I get what you're saying about that EMG tone, they work beautifully in a few of my fretless basses.
Try another set of EMGs? Would the 4 string JX set work for your spacing? I have basses with EMGs, Bartolinis, Nordstrands, Aguilars, MMs and live in a noisy environment but am able to cut out all the noise. I get what you're saying about that EMG tone, they work beautifully in a few of my fretless basses.
Nice video and bass tone on candlelight.
But if you like that I think you're chasing the wrong thing. Wilson is playing a yamaha patitucci bass which has humbuckers in it. Those would be inherently warmer in tone than most single coils. I don't know if they're linear or stacked, but that's what Yamaha says.
One last comment is that if I wanted a warm pickup, EMG would be the last place I'd look.
But if you like that I think you're chasing the wrong thing. Wilson is playing a yamaha patitucci bass which has humbuckers in it. Those would be inherently warmer in tone than most single coils. I don't know if they're linear or stacked, but that's what Yamaha says.
One last comment is that if I wanted a warm pickup, EMG would be the last place I'd look.
Interesting news from EMG. I reached out to them today about split coil pickups, and they replied that all of their pickups - both passive and active - are split side-by-side or stacked coils and therefore are hum cancelling. So I'm seriously starting to doubt if there is any solution as the severity of EMI from my power lines may be of Flint Michigan proportions.
Ok don't laugh, but I wrapped the hell out of everything, insulated all parts that shouldn't touch with electrical tape, grounded the wrap to a big sheet of copper shielding, then placed that inside a big Goodyear Blimp I made out of two large sheets of aluminum foil. Same...damn...hum. From what I can tell, it's all pretty much the same level. Does this mean shielding should still be on the table? This isn't me nay-saying you guys...this is me seeing my friendly neighborhood EMI as an unbeatable legion.
Ya fretless is all I play. Like I mentioned above, I reached out to EMG and don't believe switching models would make a difference based on what they said. But hell, I'll keep my eyes open for a pair
I am very curious about those custom pickups you mentioned. I'll reach out to them. Sounds like an expensive dice roll, but it may be my only shot. As for the tone I'm after, I should mention some more history here. I know it's a huge tangent, so no obligation to indulge. This is just for the curious who like a good story.
When I switched from guitar to bass in '96, I went to the above mentioned Sandin as he was introduced to me by a mutual friend and killer pianist, Michael Gettel. I asked what he played. This was before the Candlelight song above. Back then, he was playing a custom J bass with an original 1966 J neck that had been Jaco'd (as in fret-ripping process, not ownership), EMGs with the BTC, Badass II bridge and so on. That bass can be heard on a lot of Michael's records (The Key, Art of Nature, Skywatching).
I loved his sound so it made sense to build a bass modeled after his. He sold me his '66 neck, I took that to Mike Lull (RIP) and he built a bass around it with Sandin's specs. I named her Misty, played that until the rosewood wore down too much for fretless and replaced it with a Warmoth maple and ebony J neck, which sounded far superior btw, but I kept the old neck out of sentiment.
Sandin later went on to get a Conklin sponsorship (heard on The Journey North...lots of cool Scottish influence as a result of Gettel's trip there). That tone is monstrous, but I don't know what pickups he had then.
2000 hit and life forced me to sell everything, including my American built Eden XLT-410 and WT-300 head. Man do I miss those. 18 years go by without playing other than a few times not worth mentioning, then I snagged a used Ibanez SRF700 off Craigslist in 2018. Once I got rid of the flatwounds, added DR sunbeams and a Hipshot Bass Extender, it wasn't half bad, but it had some unimpressive Bartolini soapbars and wasn't Misty. I reached out to the guy who bought her in 2000 who sadly informed me she had been stolen.
So that's what led me to pickup my brush again, do some house painting on the side, and custom order all the parts I have now. So dealing with this hum - coupled with the fact that these modern EMGs do not sound as amazing as my original ones, and two luthiers and lots of tech support have provided no solution - is just soul-crushing. So here are you cool mo-fos acting as my last line of defense.
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EMGs are great sounding pickups though, I have a couple fretless basses with EMGs and they sound warmer than my Bartolinis or Aguilar DCBs, they’re much more balanced and record so well. These haters are just haters. I just think you like the wrong EMGs LOL.
The TWX ones are my favorite. @Crosscheck67 don’t give up!
The TWX ones are my favorite. @Crosscheck67 don’t give up!
Well I'm locked into a 5 string, and for jazz routing EMG only seems to have the J5 and the vintage. Your favorites only seem to be for six string unless I read their page wrong. If I find someone who can change the routing to a soap bar - and have the balls to let them do it - what's your pick? Got a song or video?
The TWX pickups are available in 35/40/45 size soapbars for 4/5/6 string basses, they are the dual coils that can switch into a JX pickup - stacked single coil with a push pull pot. If your spacing is narrow enough at the bridge you can use the standard 4 string J pickups too, you can even get the alnico variety or ceramic steel variety, and X or non-X preamp.
What's the total spread across the strings at the bridge pickup?
What's the total spread across the strings at the bridge pickup?
