Using 2 Js as neck humbucker

[jesterbass]

Hello ladies and gentlemen,

I have a very nice Brian Moore bass that alas, has one noisy pickup. It is a humbucker and yes, it is noisy, I guess due to poor construction. Now, I am thinking about removing it from neck position and constructing a home brewed pickup from 2 EMG Select Js I have. They hum cancel each other very well and they fit exactly in the pickup route with a little cutting out of the outer little "ears". My concern is if there is going to be cancellation issues with the bridge humbucker. I am guessing that the compound pickup I will make will have a 50% chance to have some inverse electronic characteristic with the bridge pickup. In that case what can I do? And the following is a general question of mine: If I have to swap hot with ground on a pickup to get rid of such a cancellation issue, won't I get noise on my signal from the pickup's shielding?

Thanks,
Yanni

 

[SGD Lutherie]

Each Select J is a split coil humbucker. They hum cancel all by themselves. You don't need two of them.

But you can put them both in that spot. They would probably work best in parallel, since they were not wound to be used in series.

If your neck humbucker is noisy, it's probably wired in parallel, and one coil isn't working. I'd check the wiring.

 

[jesterbass]

Thanks for you reply David. My humbuckers are apparently Mighty Mite DXH-2, they have been used in several basses built in Korea like Ibanez and apparently this Brian Moore. They are 2-conductor so I can't do anything about their internal wiring. Actually I had them removed from the instrument and connected to a jack and into my sound card, neck was dead silent, bridge had this strange "frrrrrr" noise. It did that in my home, let alone in the space we gig which is a noise nightmare.

I actually went on and installed the EMG Select J on neck position, this pickup is naturally EMG sized for 4-string bridge position so it was wide enough to accomodate 17mm string spacing that the BM has. I angled it slightly so that it has that nice rounding effect when you go up the register. The output was pretty loud compared to the remaining humbucker (which was moved from neck to bridge), but I had no other cancellation effects, everything seemed to be ok EXCEPT, it picks up noise. It's pretty similar to what my bridge humbucker used to do, but sounds more single-coily.

One thing that I wanted to ask, the humbuckers are marked DXH2-F and DXH2-R apparently for front and rear position. Do you know if they are wound differently to accomodate for position? It is possible that the neck hb that is now at bridge sounds too thin and low output because it is wound for neck position? I am thinking about installing a resistor to quiet down the J a little. If you could suggest a reasonable value for it I 'd appreciate it as I have no clue not even about the order of magnitude. I presume series connection before the blend pot would work.

Cheers,
Yanni