Yardbird bridge pickup really hummy!

[EdGrip]

Hello everyone!
I'm new to this forum, but a regular at OSG.
I recently bought a Yardbird tele bridge pickup used for a good price, and recently got round to installing it. This is my first BKP pickup. I love the sound, BUT:

It is considerably more hummy than the handwound 11k Broadcaster pickup it replaces. Are Yardbird (or BKP in general) pickups more noisy than usual?
If not, I've spazzed up the wiring somehow, or created an unintentional ground loop somewhere that's only activated in the bridge and both-in-series positions of the 4-way switch.

Any thoughts or advice?

All thinking much appreciated!

 - Ed

[EffigyForgotten]

Hello everyone!
I'm new to this forum, but a regular at OSG.
I recently bought a Yardbird tele bridge pickup used for a good price, and recently got round to installing it. This is my first BKP pickup. I love the sound, BUT:

It is considerably more hummy than the handwound 11k Broadcaster pickup it replaces. Are Yardbird (or BKP in general) pickups more noisy than usual?
If not, I've spazzed up the wiring somehow, or created an unintentional ground loop somewhere that's only activated in the bridge and both-in-series positions of the 4-way switch.

Any thoughts or advice?

All thinking much appreciated!

 - Ed

My experience was exactly the opposite, are you playing with the same settings on your amp? The BKP might have more output or maybe your pushing a certain frequency too much? Usually to much mids results in an unbalanced sound.

[EdGrip]

Hi! Thanks for the reply!

I started from scratch with all amp EQ. As I say, the tonality of the pickup is great, but the hum I'm getting is too much for me to tolerate as it is. Pickup selector goes Neck>Series>Parallel>Bridge. The neck position is as noise-free as ever, as is the parallel (standard tele middle) position.
It might be worth mentioning that I have a stainless steel scratchplate, and all pickup cavities are shielded with copper tape. So there is more than the usual potential (ha!) for earth loops. (Irrelevant explanation: The scratchplate is grounded through the bridge pickup screws, and through a spur of copper foil that comes up from the bridge pickup cavity shielding. So there is an earth loop that goes scratchplate>pickup screws>bridge pickup baseplate>black wire>back of volume pot>shielding/bridge/strings earth wire>shielding>scratchplate. However, this loop has always existed in the guitar, and has never been a problem with the previous two bridge pickups. Since the black pickup wire and the global ground wire are right next to each other for the whole 2 inch journey to the volume pot, it's hardly a loop at all.)

I'm stumped.

[EdGrip]

From the venerable Phostenix wiring diagrams:

One possible drawback of the standard 4-way Tele wiring is that in Position 1 (Bridge pickup only), the Neck pickup's hot lead is still connected to the output while its ground lead is not connected to anything. This has the potential of making the Neck pickup act as an antenna that picks up noise. A simple solution is to add one small jumper to the 4-way switch (red arrow in the drawing) that also connects the Neck pickup's ground lead to the output in Position 1 - effectively shorting out the Neck pickup and eliminating the noise potential.

I will try and figure out how to implement this with my 4-way switch tomorrow and see if it helps (for some reason most 4-ways switches go Series>Neck>Parallel>Bridge. It just makes sense to me that the single positions should be at either extreme of the switch..... ach well)

[EdGrip]

Took this apart and messed around, problem is fixed now - still not sure what was wong. Bad connection somewhere.

Suspect I may prefer the Broadcaster...

Thanks all!