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Strat dummy coils???

Started by Leevibe, February 04, 2016, 04:40:45 PM

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madbean

I've got some good pictures of my recent cavity shielding and dummy coil attempt. I'd be happy to upload them if anyone wants to see.

oldhousescott

There's also the Ilitch back plate system. I believe Ilitch is the actual mfg of the Suhr product.

Mojotone has recently introduced their "Quiet Coil" strat pickups, which they claim greatly reduces noise without using a dummy coil. Maybe they're internally shielded, or split into two coils? There's also the Zexcoil pickups with individual coils per pole piece, but they look unusual and definitely non-vintage, if that matters.

Leevibe

I replaced the stock ceramic pickups in my Agile P90 guitar for alnicos but I can't find the original pickups. If I find them, I'll pull one of them apart and put a dummy coil in that guitar. I think all the Gibson Blueshawks used dummy coils. I always thought those were cool guitars.

Quote from: john_p_wi on February 04, 2016, 10:11:10 PM
Sorry that I have not refreshed my memory on this, another issue if I recall is that you can not use the now normal reverse wound middle  pup.

One of the first "mods" I'm going to do to the guitar is replace the cheesy electronics, including the switch. My thought has been that I would put a super switch in it so I'm covered for any creative switching I may want to do. I haven't drawn anything up, but I think with 2 extra poles, I should be able to have it switch the dummy coil out in positions 2 & 4. That would leave me with hum in position 3, but I'd be OK with it.


Quote from: madbean on February 05, 2016, 12:29:33 AM
Quote from: john_p_wi on February 04, 2016, 10:11:10 PM
Sorry that I have not refreshed my memory on this, another issue if I recall is that you can not use the now normal reverse wound middle  pup.

I'm not sure that would matter once the magnets are removed. All your left with is a coil. As far as direction of the coil making a difference, my memory is also kinda sketchy but maybe because magnetic fields run orthogonal to the coil? (yes it's been 20 years since I sat in college Electricity and Magnetism)

TBH, I'm still a bit confused about wind direction. It seems like it would need to be opposite for the concept to work. I've seen youtube videos where the guy insists that it doesn't matter. I'm inclined to think he has to be wrong. In this article, the author mentions that wind direction is important, but then when he describes hooking up, he says that if the buzz is accentuated with the coil in circuit, to flip the leads. That leads me to believe that wind direction and lead orientation are both important.


Quote from: madbean on February 05, 2016, 03:14:06 PM
I've got some good pictures of my recent cavity shielding and dummy coil attempt. I'd be happy to upload them if anyone wants to see.

bring it

nzCdog

Quote from: Leevibe on February 05, 2016, 04:44:18 PM
TBH, I'm still a bit confused about wind direction. It seems like it would need to be opposite for the concept to work. I've seen youtube videos where the guy insists that it doesn't matter. I'm inclined to think he has to be wrong. In this article, the author mentions that wind direction is important, but then when he describes hooking up, he says that if the buzz is accentuated with the coil in circuit, to flip the leads. That leads me to believe that wind direction and lead orientation are both important.


Wind direction will determine the polarity of the inductor... so it's 100% important.  If the dummy isn't connected the opposite polarity it will introduce noise rather that 'buck' it

Leevibe

I picked up a cheap pickup from Amazon and I've started experimenting. I pulled the magnet off and knocked out the slugs. I've never done that before, but it took maybe 5 minutes.

I took the strings/pickguard off of a cheapie mini strat we have and started connecting stuff in parallel just by hand. I need to play with it more today, but my initial assessment is that it works! This is just listening to hum, not evaluating any tonal changes etc.

The thing that has me baffled is that it seems to work in all positions. I would expect that it would work in bridge/neck but not middle, or vice versa. And I wouldn't think it would work in the 2 & 4 positions. So far, this has all been parallel connections.

Today I'm going to wire it in as a series connection between the switch and volume pot. If it works, I'll wire in a toggle switch that I can hang out of the pickguard so I can A/B to listen for tonal differences. If this all works, I'll pop it in the real strat. This is pretty intriguing. The pickup was only about $6.

George

#20
Does anyone got experience with this kind of dummy coil?? I was thinking about building one but i dont have the know how to do it.


a guy have done a diy version of the surh BPSSC (backplate surh singlecoil canseling or somehting like that)


the original have some trimpots to finetune the humcanseling effect (and you have to contact them prior to your order to let them know about your pickups) ***Also i read that the position of the dumcoil plays significant role reagrding the result & that the Gibson cavity coils as shown below are less effective than the ones placed as shown in the red strat cavity***

here is some extra info

here is the patent
http://www.google.com/patents/US20050204905