HELP! Humbucker humms! :/

[Frank]

I said non-working, not broken! The coil may be intact but simply wired up wrong. Post a sound clip if you can, might help with a diagnosis.

[Attica!]

Well that's good to hear. The more you narrow it down, the easier it becomes. But to say you was also experiencing it with your other humbucker leads me to believe it could be something simple like a faulty pot/wiring. How many volumes/tones do you have, as it could orginate there due to the fact certain pickups use certain pots in the config. If you only have 1 vol/1tone, then its possible its a bad connection with the toggle switch. Aother story for me was that I got a cheap Les Paul Wiring Kit from Axesrus (I think), and it was only around £25. I had it wired by my tech and the humming was awful. Now this was brand new hardware with a qualified tech who is great. Well anyways...I bought 4 new pots from BKP and a Switchcraft Toggle - Problem Solved! Maybe you should invest in some new hardware? It'll be worth it.

when both single coils are selected the hum goes away instantly.  :?

This is what leads me to suspect a non-working coil in the humbucker i.e. it's acting as a single coil pickup and humming!

He said he had the same problem with his other pickup, so I'm guessing it must be the wiring/hardware. But yeah if he had both pickupswired that way, then you could be bang on!

[darkbluemurder]

Indeed it would be a rare coincidence if two humbuckers had the exact same defect - a wiring issue is more likely.

Just took of the knops and touched the pots, nothing changed, the hum was the same

Check whether the bridge is grounded. Normally if the bridge is grounded you should hear a slight reduction of buzz when you touch the strings, even on well shielded instruments. Plug in a guitar cord, take a digital multimeter (DMM) and measure the resistance between the bridge and the shaft of the guitar cord plug. You should get a zero reading. If you get anything else you need to connect a wire between any ground point (e.g. the back of a pot) and the bridge (on fulcrum/Fender/Floyd type bridges it is most convenient to solder the wire to the spring retainer claw).

While you're at it with the DMM - desolder the humbucker and measure each coil. You have 4 wires. Measure between the black and the two ones which are soldered together. You should get a reading of ca.  8k ohms. Then measure between the wire which was connected to the switch terminal and the two ones soldered together - again you should get something like 8k ohms. +/-20'% difference is nothing to worry about.

Post the measurements and we will move further with the search.

Good luck,
Stephan

[GuitarIv]

Ok guys, been kinda busy yesterday, so here's the news: I opened the guitar again and already thought that I found the problem, touching the 5 way switch with a screwdriver muted the hum out. Great I thought and connected the two parts of the switch together, not knowing that this caused the electronics to mute EVERYTHING out. I kinda created a killswitch... and I managed it to screw up the switch. Anyway, I'm getting a new one as well as borrow a multimeter by a friend of mine to check everything. Furthermore I'll upload some pics and a handdrawn wiring diagram of how the guitar is wired currently. Maybe you guys find something I don't see, because I think the grounding wires are kinda really messed up comparing them to the Seymour Duncan Wiring diagramm I found. Thanks for the help so far, this forum is awesome. And if nothing works I'll just leave the guitar lying around for some time and save up for a pre wired strat pickguard by bareknuckle :P

cheers

[Twinfan]

A dodgy switch - damn, why didn't I think of that!  :lol:

[GuitarIv]

Ok... so eventually I decided to give up on trying to fix the problem myself, considering that this is a 2500€ Custom Strat I was fiddling around with and tried out a really small guitar store a friend of mine recommended once... those guys fixed the issue, the humbucker doesn't hum anymore, the guitar sounds badass and I'm finally satisfied. Seems like it was a wiring problem, the grounding especially, my luthier $%&#ed up bigtime but those guys fixed it pretty fast and inexpensive. Anyway thanks you guys for the tipps and suggestions, you were really helpful nonetheless and I love this forum.  :D

Cheers!

p.s.: still thinking about getting some Bareknuckles when I have the cash  :P

[Frank]

It's astonishing sometimes how guitar techs can make the simplest mistakes when it comes to wiring. There's really not a lot to guitar wiring once you know how switches and pots work and you've learned to read a schematic. Treat yourself to a multimeter sometime, they're essential for quickly diagnosing wiring faults.

[GuitarIv]

Will do so :)

[FELINEGUITARS]

Yeah - not all techs are equally experienced or gifted.

Glad it got sorted out.