chase
Apprentice Shielder
Posts: 30
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Post by chase on Feb 25, 2012 17:25:59 GMT -5
Hey 'Nuts, Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I've been lurking and learning. A year or two ago I came up with a variation on the Ultimate Utah scheme (itself descended from the legendary Mike Richardson schemes), thanks to some help from sumgai and John Hewitt: guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=wiring&thread=4953One of the tweaks was to eliminate the hanging hot coil in the UUSS by tying the ground of a pickup to its hot end (something both sumgai and JH suggested that took me a while to catch on to). I understand this is a somewhat controversial approach, as some here feel that the shunted coil will still affect the signal because there is no load on it. Here's chrisk's explanation: guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wiring&action=display&thread=1657&page=3If I understand it correctly, Chris's objection was that having the shunted pickup in the circuit would still induce current and thus suck tone; John and some others feel that this effect is negligible. Here's a crazy possibility that might just be due to my own lack of understanding of basic electrical engineering: what if you tie a resistor in series with the shunt, to load the shunted pickup? Like this: Would this address Chris's concerns? Have no real effect? Or would it make things worse somehow (by blocking the flow at one end of the coil)? Thanks for any insights. Awaiting edification.
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Post by JohnH on Feb 25, 2012 17:57:37 GMT -5
Hi chase - that will definately sound like the neck single. My guess is that whether you have that resistor or not will make little difference to noise, but the cause of such noise due to hanging from hot is tricky, and personally I'm not convinced it is actually solved when you shunt a coil either. On theother hand, its not too bad an effect and what does fix it is overall shielding.
You'd need to experiment in the name of science if you want to advance this subject. A really small cap might be an alternative to your resistor, if it does anything at all.
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chase
Apprentice Shielder
Posts: 30
Likes: 0
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Post by chase on Feb 25, 2012 18:32:12 GMT -5
Thanks John. Yeah, I think you and sumgai were both of the opinion that the shunted coil didn't add much noise to the signal, so it may not matter - but if there's a way to eliminate it, I'd like to know.
Hmm, sounds like it's time to break out the alligator clips. I'll try the cap, too. Luckily I have several loose pickups floating around at the moment...
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Post by JohnH on Feb 25, 2012 18:38:26 GMT -5
Hmm, sounds like it's time to break out the alligator clips. I'll try the cap, too. Luckily I have several loose pickups floating around at the moment... 'trouble is, the act of testing things with aligator clips will probably add more noise than we would be trying to test for!
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Post by reTrEaD on Feb 26, 2012 11:06:05 GMT -5
the cause of such noise due to hanging from hot is tricky, and personally I'm not convinced it is actually solved when you shunt a coil either. Definitely not solved but perhaps somewhat reduced. If you reason it out, instead of one long antenna with the pickup in the middle, you would have two shorter antennas in parallel with the pickup at the end. Is that really better? idk. what does fix it is overall shielding. Imho, shielding would do much more than shunting. But the real fix is to not have excess shiz hanging from hot. Shielding is always a good idea. Hanging and/or shunting should be avoided whenever possible. But if it's not possible, do what you have to, to get where you need to go.
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Post by sumgai on Feb 29, 2012 3:36:25 GMT -5
Remember, in nearly all cases (newey's "special" Tele pup in his bass comes to mind), at least part of the pickup itself is outside of the shielding "cage" - it extends above the plane of the pickguard, and the shielding attached underneath it. From that, we can see that at least part of the coil can still act like an antenna, vis-a-vis picking up and sending hum to the amp.
As explained in my original post, the idea behind connecting both poles together is that whatever is generated at one pole will be the opposite polarity of the other end of the coil (the other pole). Since that means complete cancellation, there 'should' be no hum noticible at the output - at least not from the shunted pickup.
I leave the whole question of "Dreaded Tone Suck" to others to figure out for themselves. Ask John for a good starting point in your experiments......
HTH
sumgai
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