Canceling Tele hum on the cheap

For more than 50 years, the Fender Telecaster has been manufactured pretty much the same way. It's trademark sound is one of raw, gutsy tone with sharp attack and great clarity. Because of it's simplicity and honesty, it is perhaps the best way to showcase a pair of single coil pickups. One of the drawbacks of true single coils is their hum which guitar makers have been trying to fix for decades. Since the Telecaster's design was perfected rather early on in electric guitar history (1950) it is one of the only dual pickup guitars that did not have hum-canceling capabilities, and it still doesn't today. Most of the time the two pickups are made reverse-wound/reverse-polarity so that when they are used in combination (the middle position of your pickup selector) they will cancel the hum. The telecaster design has been pretty much left alone because so many players love the trademark sound and especially the sound you get when the neck and bridge pickup are played together. For a lot of players that is more important than "bucking" the hum, but for you it might be more important to have a quiet setting on the guitar. Here I will show you how to cheaply and easily buck the hum on a standard Telecaster. 

As we just discussed, most Tele pickups are wound the same direction and charged with the same polarity facing up, making them non-humbucking, so all you need to do is switch the leads and reverse the polarity on one pickup. You can test the polarity by holding a compass up to the top of the pickup as shown below. Opposites attract, so this pickup is charged SOUTH UP (fig. 1).

fig. 1

Reversing the leads on a pickup is a simple operation with a soldering iron, but charging the magnets will be a little more tricky.  Especially since most vintage, and vintage-reissue Telecasters have a copper-plated steel baseplate on the bridge and a chrome cover on the neck pickup, which is soldered to the ground of the guitar.  

Modern American Standard bridge pickups, like the one shown below, do not have a baseplate, and are changed NORTH UP (fig. 2), so here I will remove the pickup and charge it SOUTH UP.

fig. 2

This can be done with a pair of 1" rare earth magnets from Steward-Macdonald ($8.57 each).  These are extremely strong magnets that will successfully charge Alnico polepieces like in my pickups here.  They will also successfully erase hard drives like in you iPhone or MacBook, so keep them away from all computerized equipment.  You can see the magnetic field you are dealing with by holding it to a compass .  It is attracting the NORTH needle, so this is the SOUTH pole of the magnet (fig. 3).

fig. 3

Charge the pickup polepieces by moving them back and fourth between the rare earth magnets.  The magnets will change magnetic fields of weaker magnets to what they are most attracted to, so a SOUTH pole with charge pickup polepieces to be NORTH.  Rare earth magnets will hold themselves to the jaws of a vice.  Label the side that will charge magnets to be North as I have done below (fig. 4).

fig. 4

Adjust the jaws so that the magnets are as close as possible to the polepieces but still allow the pickup to pass freely.  Move the pickup through the jaws of the vice a few times and it is fully charged.  Reinstall the pickup with the leads reversed.  Positive leads are usually white or yellow and in this case would be soldered to the ground (the back of the potentiometer), negative leads are usually black, blue or green and in this case would be soldered to your switch.  

If this pickup had a metal baseplate (fig.5) or a cover it would be a little more difficult to charge the magnets but sill possible.  It would require disconnecting the negative (ground) lead from the baseplate or cover and running a separate ground wire from the baseplate to the back of the potentiometer.  Then, special care must be taken to break the hold of the potting wax and remove the baseplate or cover without damaging the coil.  Then you can charge the magnets.  

fig. 5

Now you have a hum-canceling mode on your Tele without effecting the tone of the bridge or the neck pickup!

'62 Strat pickup repair

This morning I had in my shop a bridge pickup from a 1962 Fender Stratocaster.  The pickup was not producing any sound when installed in the guitar and when hooked up to a mulitmeter, showed no resistance.  This means that there is an open circuit somewhere between the positive and the negative lead wires.  It is important to be very careful when working on this type of vintage gear in order to preserve the original tones of the guitar, so a number of steps were taken to carefully diagnose the source of the problem.

First, upon removing the cover I could see that this pickup uses Formvar wire, a common wire of the period, which gives it that coppery look.  There is a thin layer of wax on the pickup meaning it was at some point wax potted.

I could see that the wire leading to the black, negative wire is leading to the center of the bobbin and the wire leading to the white, positive, wire is coming from the outside.  This means that the wire was wound onto the pickup in a clockwise direction. If you point your finger at the left eyelet where the black lead wire is connected and then follow the wire on a path around the magnetized poles about 8,000 times and then end at the right eyelet you can see that this pickup was indeed wound in a clockwise direction.

When I oriented a magnetometer over the poles I could see that this pickup is South up with an average of 27 gauss.  A bit too much magnetism for a bridge pickup for my taste, but in the interest of preserving originality I left the magnets alone.

Next I inspected the condition of the actual Formvar wire and I could see that there was no visible damage.  My next step was to heat up the solder on the eyelets and add a little bit more solder.  This connection can get dirty over the years and cause a bad connection.

Eureka!!  After doing that I tested the resistance again and sure enough this pickup is reading about 5.44 thousand ohms of resistance, just right.  I am done and the original tone of the pickup is preserved.

If heating up the eyelets had not worked my next step would have been to disconnect the finish and unwind a few coils to try to find a break.  As a last resort I would have removed all of the old wire and solder, rewound the pickup with vintage-spec wire and waxed it.

What happened to Sklar Guitars?

Well, nothing really.  It's still the same company, it's just now called Schuyler Dean Pickups.  I thought this would more accurately describe what I do and who I am.  Having an alter ego is fun, but sometimes confusing, and that's what "Sklar" was, an alter ego, a nickname, which I may still use when naming specific pickups, who knows. 

Schuyler (pronounced sky-ler) is my given name and I am proud of it even though it trips people up with the pronunciation sometimes.  But it is much harder to explain that, "My name is Schuyler and it is pronounced Skyler and the name of my company is Sklar which is pronounced the way it is spelled." 

And I also dropped "guitars" from the name because most of what I do is having to do with the electronics, specifically the pickups.

But I am still making pickups and enjoying every minute of it and you can call or email to talk about what kind of sound you are going for in your setup, or you can stop by and visit my at my other job at Cole Hardware in San Francisco. 

-Schuyler
415-238-7325
schuylerdeanguitars@gmail.com

Top Five ways to improve your tone

In honor of the movie (and book) High Fidelity here are the top five ways to make your electric guitar or bass sound better.

5.  electronics- 

this Stratocaster pickguard has copper shielding tape, 250k CTS pots, .022 uf orange drop capacitor, 5-way switch, cloth-covered wire, and Schuyler Dean pickups

This includes pots, capacitors, switches, jacks and shielding.  If you're building a guitar it is a good idea to not skimp on this part and if your doing something like installing new pickups it's nice to use quality electronics to carry the current.

• Shielding- it is important to have shielding grounded properly and surrounding the entire control cavity so that outside electrical interference can't get in.  typically luthiers use shielding paint on the wooden cavity grounded by a lead wire, and shielding tape on the back of the pickguard.  Everything is grounded in this circuit; the pots touching the pickguard shielding, the metal covers on humbuckers, and even the braiding on 2-conductor wire.  A wire is then run from the back of the pots to the bridge grounding the strings.  Ever notice how when you touch the strings the amp stops humming?
• Potentiometers (pots)- 250K pots are warmer and typically used for single coils and 500K pots are brighter and typically used for humbuckers.  No-load pots are louder and make the guitar sound brighter.  There are endless possibilities.
• Capacitors (caps)- The higher the number, the more bass at the zero setting on your tone control.  A .100 uf cap will sound warmer than a .001 uf cap.  Again the possibilities are endless.

4.  The Nut-

 a bone nut in a Fender P-Bass

This piece of shaped plastic or bone holds the strings in place at the zero fret for the correct string spacing.  Most are made of inexpensive plastic but you can get a nicer tone from bone or even brass for killer sustain!  You can only hear the difference when the strings are being played open of course.


3.  The Bridge-

the Stratocaster tremolo pivots on six body screws and is tensioned by three 

to five springs mounted on the bottom of the body.

There are many different types from the tremolo to the string-thru-body and they all add a bit of character to your guitar.  Brass saddles will typically sound a little nicer than cheaper steel ones.

2.  Pickups- 

Jazzmaster pickups get their fat tone from short "pancake" style 

bobbins and plenty of winds of copper wire.

All pickups really do is change string vibration into an electrical current, but they have everything to do with your guitar tone and how it behaves through the amp.  Good quality pickups like the ones I make will sound clearer and have more voice and character than cheap ones.  High-output pickups will be louder and produce more lows than brighter low-output pickups.

1.  Strings-

And the number one best way to improve your tone (aside from practicing) is to use new, high-quality strings.  Strings with more nickel will sound warmer, and strings with more steel will sound brighter.  You can also opt for flatwounds for an even warmer tone.  Larger diameter strings like .011's (on six string guitar) will be louder and warmer because there is more mass moving for the magnetic pickup to detect.  Old, dirty strings will not perform as well and sound dead so it is important to keep your strings clean and change them regularly.

Bass Pickup Test

Can better pickups really make a cheap guitar sound more high-end?

 I've been wanting to try this test for quite a while now, doing a controlled experiment where all the variables are the same to test the difference between stock pickups and high-quality ones like mine.  For this test I acquired a fairly run-of-the mill P-Bass copy with a maple neck, rosewood fretboard, some sort of inexpensive body wood like basswood or laminate, and standard electronics. Cost: $100.

I started by recording the stock bass via direct input to my M-Audio Firewire.  I recorded in ProTools and just used some simple compression and a little bit of reverb to give it some depth.  I did a simple riff (forgive my sloppy playing) first with a pick and then switched to fingers.

Next I took apart the bass and took out the old Select by EMG pickups.  Output was 7.6k and magnetic pull was over 50 Gauss per coil.

I replaced these with a set of my vintage-spec pickups with Alnico V magnets hand beveled and hand weakened to 25 Gauss.  They are scatterwound with 42 gauge Formvar wire with 10,000 winds per coil, yielding a little over 10k of output.  I top it off with wax potting in the proper mixture of beeswax and paraffin and wire it all up with vintage-style cloth covered push-back wire.  Truly the cream of the crop.  Total cost of the bass with my pickups: $200.


I wired everything back up and restrung the guitar with the same strings and recorded the same riff with the same software and the same compression and reverb and you can hear the results below in the two mp3 files. It helps to listen with some high-quality headphones.

First you will hear the guitar with the stock EMG pickup, it's a cheap pickup and sounds about as it should.

Stock Pickup
Next you hear my vintage-spec P-Bass replacement.  First, pay close attention to the extreme highs and you will notice even the most subtle sounds of the fingers moving over the roundwound strings, something you can't even hear from the EMGs.  This clarity and response of my pickup is a result of scatterwinding, this lowers the distributed capacitance of the pickup.  Now listen to the extreme lows and you will hear nice round, organic low notes where the EMG is flabby.  If you listen to the track again and this time listen to the mids and you will hear all kinds of character and life where the EMG's are obviously lacking.  A guitar should have a "voice" and not just sound like a P-Bass, the mids are where this character lies.  The Sklar pickups hear this voice very well and it comes through organically whereas the EMGs sound harsh and metallic. 

My Pickup

The clarity and character of the Schuyler Dean pickup comes from the select components that I use and the quality of the craftsmanship.  They say a band is only as good as its worst player, and that is true with pickups as well.  If every piece of the puzzle is a good one then the results will be good.

The Best of Both Worlds

Humbuckers are used for their ability to "buck" hum and also for their fat tone.  Many modern humbuckers come with extra lead wires so that they can be custom wired to switch between single coils and humbuckers via a push-pull pot.  The only problem is that when you take a humbucker with an 8k output and switch to single coil mode you literally cut the output in half to about 4k because you are only using half of the pickup.  A 4k single coil is a pretty weak single coil, and you will notice the tone will be quite thin and unexciting.  

One way of fighting this problem is to wind the coil on the adjustable side to a higher output.  At Sklar we use special 43 gauge wire to wind the adjustable screw side of the pickup to 6k in the neck and 7k in the bridge, similar to what you would find in a strat.  The slug side of the pickup is wound normal and when you switch back to humbucker mode you get nice fat tone with no hum.  You can custom order a set of these pickups with your choice of covers for a special price of $200 for the month of April only!  Email sklarguitars@gmail.com to place your order.

We teamed up with Aaron and James of Maret Guitars to install a set of these in their Custom Classic and we were very pleased with the results.  This guitar has an alder body, a special wide maple neck, ebony fretboard, push-pull coil tap switch, string-thru-body bridge, pearl white finish, and a snappy two-piece tortoise pickguard.  The guitar is on display at SF Guitarworks in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco and you can come by and see it yourself and even try it out.  Make sure to talk to Aaron while you are there.

How does a truss rod work?

The truss rod makes adjusting the bow in your neck possible.  They can be found in all modern electric, acoustic, and bass guitars.  some vintage guitars didn't come with a truss rod, but that's ok, as long as the action is not too low or too high.

Strings put a lot of tension between the tuners and the bridge, so naturally the neck will bow a little under the force, a little bow in the neck is a good thing.  Unfortunately wood is prone to warping due to temperature and humidity changes and can bow too much causing high action or even back-bow making the action too low and causing fret-buzz. 

A truss rod is a metal rod that runs up the length of the neck under the fingerboard and has a nut at one end for adjustment.  There are many different types of truss rods but one of the most common is the twin-action truss rod shown below.  They make it possible to adjust for either bow or backbow.

The twin-action rod is two threaded rods connected to blocks at both ends.  At one end there is a nut for adjustment, if you turn the nut clockwise it shortens the bottom rod and forces the rod and the neck to bend backwards and correct bow.  If you turn the nut counter clockwise it lengthens the bottom rod and forces the neck and the rod to bend forwards and correct backbow.  Here is a picture of how the truss rod fits in a small channel routed in the neck under the fingerboard.

The other type of rod is a single-action rod that only corrects for bow in a neck.  This type of rod requires a curved truss rod channel.  The rod itself (shown in green) is curved and when you tighten the nut it forces the rod to try to straighten out, thus straightening out the neck and correcting for too much bow.

Generally to adjust a truss rod you need to make very slight adjustments at a time, you may not even see results for 24 hours after the adjustment is made.  Go slowly to avoid breaking your truss rod, it is a very expensive repair.

For more information on how to set up your guitar, see our setup blog entry.