Noiseless pickups

[jeremyb]

So... how noiseless are noiseless pickups? the stock humbuckers on my ESP are quite buzzy if you turn the volume and tone up full (is there any other position??), how much of a difference would it make changing out the pickups? and what would be a good replacement for a bridge humbucker for metal?

[ash]

So... how noiseless are noiseless pickups? the stock humbuckers on my ESP are quite buzzy if you turn the volume and tone up full (is there any other position??), how much of a difference would it make changing out the pickups? and what would be a good replacement for a bridge humbucker for metal?

'Noiseless' is just a new buzzword for stacked single coil sized humuckers. They're no more noiseless than conventional humbuckers, sometimes less noiseless... so to speak.

Whether swapping out the stock humbucker would reduce hum (frets buzz, pickups hum) depends on where the hum is coming from in the first place. It could be a sheilding or earthing problem, the design of the pickup (not all humbuckers will buck hum equally).

I could type out a list of 80 worthy metal humbuckers, but at or near the top of the list are SD Blackouts, especially when it comes to signal/noise ratio.

[jeremyb]

Ahh cool, what do people do normally to reduce all the noise that a humbucker seems to make when you're not playing anything, apart from turn the volume down....

What do the SD blackouts retail for out of interest?

[ash]

Use less gain

Blackouts aresomething like $190 alone or around $350 for a pair around these parts.

[slash-ed]

Ahh cool, what do people do normally to reduce all the noise that a humbucker seems to make when you're not playing anything, apart from turn the volume down....

What do the SD blackouts retail for out of interest?

Noise gate?

[Ears]

Kinman's work a little differently. Firstly the two coils are termed differential because one is for noise only, this is slightly different from standard and stacked humbuckers and other companies also do this, but Kinman claims to have magnetically isolated the much smaller noise sensing coil from the signal coil claiming significantly increased performance.
I'd attach the patent documents and drawings but the site won't accept pdfs.

[mr_sooty]

The SCN's in my old American Deluxe HSS Strat were far quieter than the Humbucker in the same guitar. They were totally noiseless from what I could tell. My current Strat's Dimarzio Areas might pickup laptop noise, or other extreme interference, but they're still quieter than the mini-humbuckers in my Reverend.

[B45-12]

Anyone ever experimented with a low impedence balanced line?? I was thinking guitar mounted minature transformer (say 7k primary the pups network feeds into and 400 ohms centre tapped secondary) and another identical transformer at the amp with the 7k side feeding into the amp. The idea being the centre tap gives an earth shield for twin pair coax connecting the two shorting out the audio frequency hum etc the twin wires pick up while the xformed signal will be so powerful it would effectively hide any remaining noise. I undersand Les Paul does this sort of thing so he can run long lines in clubs near neon etc without problems but I've never got around to experimenting myself.

The other thing I wonder about comes from the opto isolator - basically an led coupled to a phototransisor - the idea being the guitar is electrically isolated from the amp thus avoiding nasties that can happen in places like the US where the amp and the mike's ground switches are flipped to opposites and you get 240volts across the hand on the guitar and the hand on the mike. Now if the cable was fibre optic and the led was on the guitar, the transistor at the amp you could avoid picking up noise on the cable run although you'd still have any noise inherent in the pups (ie what they pick up in their coils).