KVR Audio

PurpleCatfishBettie · Post by **PurpleCatfishBettie** » Thu Nov 10, 2016 3:29 am

...making a guitar with a single P90... is there a way to get rid of the buzz? ... maybe lining the pickup cavity with copper tape?

PurpleCatfishBettie · Post by **PurpleCatfishBettie** » Thu Nov 10, 2016 5:37 pm

http://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/setup ... d-a-guitar

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to- ... g-the-buz/

http://searcystringworks.blogspot.com/2 ... -myth.html

Thoracius · Post by **Thoracius** » Sat Nov 26, 2016 3:18 am

You definitely want to line the cavity with some metal.

Also, you want your strings grounded. I think in most guitars there's a wire that goes from the electronics and makes a good contact with the bridge.

There are also a lot of environmental factors that cause buzz that you can try to avoid in order to cut down on buzz -- classic culprits include dimmer switches, florescent light bulbs, refrigerators, ...

egbert · Post by **egbert** » Sat Nov 26, 2016 12:43 pm

Kinman makes noiseless p90s - perhaps others like Dimarzio or SD or whoever make them also but I have not heard of them. The Kinmans will do the job. Just shielding the electronics won't cut it - they will reduce noise but that is all. With single coils, the pickup itself is a very effective aerial for hum and RFI unless you have some sort of hum cancelling arrangement like stacked coils or conventional humbuckers.

PurpleCatfishBettie · Post by **PurpleCatfishBettie** » Tue Dec 13, 2016 6:13 am

i saw this 'double stacked P90', and was thinking it might be cool to hook it up to a pot, where center position is both coils, and going CW, and/or CCW goes further into either of the 2 pickups in the 'stack'. is that doable?

egbert · Post by **egbert** » Tue Dec 13, 2016 7:04 am

Hum cancellation only happens fully when you have equal # of turns on the two coils. I am not sure that the bottom coil gets the same amount/quality of signal from the strings - it's main purpose is to act as a similar strength aerial for noise and hum and thus allow for cancellation of that unwanted part of the pickup output.

PurpleCatfishBettie · Post by **PurpleCatfishBettie** » Tue Dec 13, 2016 9:09 am

interesting... hadn't given it thought, but it makes total sense. so maybe it would be better to try that trick with a standard humbucker. sort of a variation on coil tapping?

egbert · Post by **egbert** » Tue Dec 13, 2016 11:37 am

What is your objective soundwise? You can split a humbucker so that you use get a (noisy) single coil sound out of one half and ignore the other half or you can use tapped coils to get two output levels.

Whether these other alternative sounds are going to sound all that great is another matter. You might get a mediocre single coil sound and you may or may not like the tapped sound. If the humbucker has 4 conductors you get the maximum in flexibility.

PurpleCatfishBettie · Post by **PurpleCatfishBettie** » Tue Dec 13, 2016 3:11 pm

lol... i don't have any goals...just think a few things up. was thinking, 4-wire humbucker, wired into a pot, you could have one half or the other (not too much difference right, since they're side by side), or both halves.

going in another direction, and getting back to p90s, was thinking of 2 flat single-layer p90s, mounted 'side by side' with the 'reverse polarity thing' to mitigate the buzz... then just wire both of them into a single pot, and they act as a single (huge) 'double coil'.

anyway, for buzz in general i've been looking at something like an 'isolation transformer': https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006NG977W

edit: (i really do have goals (get rid of buzz, build a special fuzz pedal, build a special ringmod, a triple delay, etc....) but was just being flippant)

Buzzless Guitar with single P90