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Usually when I play in a studio and have had hum problems, you have probably noticed that if you turn to a certain angle from your amplifier that the hum will usually decrease. You are actually picking up stray magnetic fields or EMF signals. What I have done and had worked on occasion is instead…

This is usually caused because of hookup wires have been reversed or soldered to the wrong eyelet. This happens when the hot lead wire often white or yellow in color from the pickup is soldered to the eyelet that also connects the beginning of the coil. The ground wire that is most often black in…

This has a lot to do with the sensitivity of the pickups and how securely they are mounted into the bridge plate. I really noticed this when working with Roy Buchanan. When examining his guitar, I noticed that the bottom plate on his bridge pickup was loose and his pickups were on the verge of…

The spring is in close proximity to the pickups which are both in a cavity. The lower the height adjustment of the pickups will make them closer to springs inside the cavity. The springs are made from a tempered spring steel and usually chrome or nickel plated. The spring steel is a ferrous and attracted…

This is another common problem when working on your instrument and you forget to make a note to where your wires are connected. Many times the output wire from the volume control and the ground wire are reversed. This makes all the strings and grounded components noisy and buzz when touched. Many times the wires…

When you use both pickups in a Fender Jazzmaster the sound is humbucking and very quiet. The bridge pickup is wound counter-clockwise with South polarity and the neck pickup is wound clockwise with North polarity. When both pickups are used together, they become connected in parallel and become humbucking because each have an opposite winding…

The height adjust screw is probably made of a ferrous material and plated in either chrome or nickel. When the screw is in proximity to the magnetized pole piece in a pickup it can become magnetized and act like a pole piece. Using a metal pick can strike the screw and act as if your…

This usually happens when the wires are reversed on Fender style single coil pickups. When installing other brands of guitar or bass pickups, they may be out of phase with the existing pickups, (magnetically-in or out of phase)(Electrically-winding direction). The magnet wire is wound directly around the rod magnet pole pieces. At times the insulation…

I would say there are advantages to having both series and parallel wiring. You can get interesting tones when using more than one coil. When using two coils, they can be combined in series, parallel, humbucking in phase and out of phase. When two coils are hooked up in series you have maximum DC resistance…

There are several things that can be done to help from melting and burning the insulation on hookup wires. First check the temperature of your soldering iron. If it’s too hot it will damage the contacts and cook the solder. Always mask off the body or other surfaces that could get damaged by solder drops…