huuuuuuuum.

makepeace

Hey guys.

Ok, so I've fitted a hand wound P-90 (bought from Jess Loureiro in Spain) in my Harmony H1215 archtop. It works and all, and sounds pretty good too, but there is toooons of hum, more so than I've ever heard. ???

I know its a single coil, so hum is to be expected, but I wouldn't have thought it would be this bad? Compared with my Squier strat its like chalk and cheese.

Could I have done something wrong?

I used alpha pots for volume and tone (2 250k's), a Mallory 150 0.047uf cap and pickup wire. I wired everything according to the seymour duncan schem for 1 single coil, 1 volume, 1 tone. Pretty much standard. Gone over the wiring with the schem twice and everythings right. :-\

Anyone got any ideas?

Gearhead

From the pickup position via the controls to the jack is quite a distance, so it does matter what wire you use. Especially in the case of a hollow body where there is no cavity shielding, you want to use shielded wire for all connections. You want to only tie the shield to ground on one side unless it is really necessary as a ground connection, e.g. between jack and pots.
There is also some difference between shielded wire and shielded wire, don't skimp on half a meter of that stuff.

makepeace

thanks gearhead,

will get some proper shielded wire asap. ?

AlanRatcliffe

Also a good idea to earth the strings via the tailpiece. With a Strat or a P90 LP, the player is an important part of the screening.

MikeM

it'll buzz like crazy when you arent touching it, worse under high gain

+1. Grounding isn't an option, it's a requirement.

+99 If stray electricity has not got a path to ground from the strings to the bridge to the jack socket to the amp to the AC socket, IT WILL TRAVEL THROUGH YOUR BODY.

+9999 and more than 6mili amps of current can stop your heart!

From a few posts in a thread recently started on the Seymour forums ?

strataxe

Try not to sit too close to your amp. Find that if I'm playing right next to it it drives me up the wall.

makepeace

Hey guys,

Thanks for the replies.

Alan Ratcliffe wrote Also a good idea to earth the strings via the tailpiece. With a Strat or a P90 LP, the player is an important part of the screening.

I completely forgot about that. Will do it when I rewire it with shielded wire.

MikeM wrote
it'll buzz like crazy when you arent touching it, worse under high gain

+1. Grounding isn't an option, it's a requirement.

+99 If stray electricity has not got a path to ground from the strings to the bridge to the jack socket to the amp to the AC socket, IT WILL TRAVEL THROUGH YOUR BODY.

+9999 and more than 6mili amps of current can stop your heart!
From a few posts in a thread recently started on the Seymour forums ?

Well thats good to know. And to think I was just concerned about the hum ?

strataxe wrote Try not to sit too close to your amp. Find that if I'm playing right next to it it drives me up the wall.

Yeah I know about that, but that's not the problem. As I said when compared to my strat..