Illustration courtesy Singlecoil
Let’s have a deep look into what can be done to get rid of single-coil hum, which can be very annoying, especially when playing live. I’m sure you all know the situation: Your band managed to get an important Friday night gig at, let’s say, Bob’s Country Bunker. You and your bandmates arrive in time to set up your equipment, naturally with everything plugged into the same circuit as Bob’s popcorn machine, dishwasher, and sandwich maker. You plug in your Strat, turn up your amp, and there’s a loud humming noise coming out of it.
A single-coil pickup has one coil with six magnet rods and two bobbins holding everything together. It not only picks up the strings, but also all kinds of external magnetic fields generated by transformers and other electromagnetic devices. But when two coils are wound in opposite directions and are working together, the hum will get canceled. This is an old principle dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, and it’s how a humbucker pickup works. In the past, guitarists had to struggle with radio stations, fluorescent tubes, transformers, and the like; today, it’s more digital fallout and, of course, digital power supplies of all kinds.
The pickup industry created all kinds of hum-canceling pickups in single-coil shape, most commonly stacked and double-rail-style pickups. So, a humbucker pickup can be the ticket out of such unpleasant live situations. But all of these options generate a different magnetic field compared to a single-coil pickup, resulting in a different tone. The resonant frequency is shifted downwards a little bit because the ohmic resistance and inductance of the two coils are added together. The tone gets milder and warmer, with more midrange—you all know this tone. Splitting such a humbucker will sound more single-coil-like, but it will pick up hum again. Connecting both coils in parallel rather than in series will also sound more single-coil-like and is hum-canceling, but it’s not a real single-coil tone.
Using a reverse wound, reverse polarity (RWRP) pickup such as a Strat’s middle pickup will get you at least two hum-free switching positions (bridge+middle and neck+middle), but even this sounds different. Going active is another way to fight humming noises, and these special pickups sound more or less like a real single-coil, too.
But what if you don’t want to compromise? Is pure single-coil tone with no hum possible? Yes and no! It is possible to come close, but one day, a digital gremlin may find a way to annoy you to a certain degree. And there are extreme situations where only a humbucker will work.
One step in the right direction is shielding the pickups and cavity of your guitar. Shielding the compartment of a guitar the right way is a challenge on its own, and I will cover this in a future installment of this column. But even if all the shielding is done the right way, the sound of the pickup will be altered to a certain degree, which is the nature of the beast. And the shielding is always there, so you can’t switch between pure single-coil and shielded single-coil tone.
So, what about switchable hum-canceling for your guitar? This way you could have both: pure single-coil tone and hum-free operation when needed. And if this could not only be made switchable but also controllable, you could balance your tone between the two.
Here is a solution based on principles from Bill Lawrence, which my dear friend Bernd C. Meiser from the BSM company has refined in order to make it more controllable: a variable dummy coil.
“But what if you don’t want to compromise? Is pure single-coil tone with no hum possible? Yes and no!”
In simple terms, a dummy coil is an additional pickup that is identical to the other pickups but without magnets. It has a phase, but no polarity. A dummy coil accepts the electric signal created by the magnetic single-coil pickup and reverses it, which will remove a large portion of the hum. In the process, a very small amount of the treble signal is lost as well. However, this treble loss is far less compared to stacked or dual-rail humbuckers.
The specs of the dummy coil need to be close to the pickup you are complementing. So, any universal dummy coils advertised to work with all single-coil pickups will only work to a certain degree but not perfectly. Instead, it’s best if you order a dummy coil that matches your pickup. The company who made your pickup will know the formula, and a dummy coil from them will be super effective. If that pickup is from a larger manufacturer, you’ll need to find out specific parameters—wire gauge, wire type, number of turns—so a custom pickup company can make a matching dummy coil for you.
The simplest way to set up a dummy coil would be to connect it permanently, so it’s 100 percent active all the time. For more flexibility, you can add a switch to turn the dummy coil on and off. But the most flexible way is to use a pot to control the dummy coil, so you can dial in pure single-coil tone, 100 percent dummy-coil hum-removing, and everything in between—in other words, so you can balance tone and hum-free-ness depending on the certain playing situation.
To do so, connect a 0.01 uF capacitor in parallel to the dummy coil. The high-end frequencies will no longer pass the dummy coil and its inductance; they will be drained low-resistance to ground. For the bass frequencies, the capacitor is still high-resistance so the dummy coil is active. This way you will have humbucking functionality for the bass frequencies, but pure single-coil tone in the high frequencies—what a perfect and clever solution from Bill Lawrence. If you now connect the capacitor and the dummy coil to a pot, you have a controllable dummy coil as described above.
You can experiment with the capacitor value for fine-tuning your system; 0.01 μF is a pretty good value to start. With a smaller cap, you shift the humbucking effect toward the high frequencies and vice versa. A smaller cap means more overall humbucking (bass and highs) and a larger cap means less overall humbucking, with the high and middle frequencies staying untouched.
A Stratocaster is perfect for this mod because it has two tone controls. One will be converted to a Telecaster-style master tone control, while the other will become the new dummy-coil controller.
For a Stratocaster with three vintage flavored single-coil pickups, I recommend the following pot configuration (all audio taper): 250k volume, 500k tone, 500k dummy-coil controller. This way, in humbucking mode, the two coils are connected in series rather than in parallel, so the resonance peak will be dampened. The two 500k pots will help compensate for this. The 250k volume is always the way to go in a passive guitar system to ensure the best and most even control. The 500k tone pot can be a little bit over the top in pure single-coil mode, but simply roll it down a little and you are in the 250k ballpark—problem solved!
Here we go for the wiring. It’s not hard to do and mostly uses the parts that are already there:
Illustration courtesy Singlecoil
That’s it! Next month, we will talk about some alternative ways to service a Stratocaster that can be real time savers, so stay tuned.
Until then ... keep on modding!
Diagram of the Jeff Beck Esquire wiring
It was a really sad day for the music world on January 10, 2023, when Jeff Beck passed away at age 78 from a bacterial meningitis infection. He was, for sure, one of the best and most valued guitarists ever, influencing countless players all over the world with his unique tone and style. I don’t think I have to mention that using the same gear will not make you sound like Jeff Beck—his playing chops are close to unreachable. But it can help you to sound closer to Beck’s tone, so let’s have a look into a few of his guitars that I think are the most important.
When we talk about Jeff Beck’s guitars, we are also talking about pickup mastermind Seymour Duncan, who was a close friend of the guitarist. Duncan is the brains behind many of the guitars that Jeff Beck played during his outstanding career.
1. The Tele-Gib
This is the guitar that started the lifelong friendship between Beck and Duncan back in 1974, when Duncan was working in London as a guitar tech at the Fender Soundhouse. (The Fender Soundhouse was a huge store in London during the ’70s.) You can hear this guitar on “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” from Blow by Blow.
In 1974, when Beck was recording in the CBS studios near the Soundhouse, Duncan restored a butchered 1959 Fender Telecaster to working condition. To combine the best of both worlds, he installed two rewound PAF humbuckers, saved from a smashed 1959 Gibson Flying V that previously belonged to guitarist Lonnie Mack. Because the Telecaster did not have a curved top like a Les Paul, they were installed in flat, white humbucker frames, and since the original Telecaster bridge was missing, Duncan installed a Gibson stop-bar tailpiece and an ABR-1 bridge. Duncan presented this Gibson-ized top-loader Tele to Beck, and he instantly fell in love with it. The rest is history, as they say.
“You can order a Telecaster body with two humbucker routings without any problem. That was not even conceived of back in the early ’70s.”
Building a copy of this guitar is much easier today than it was back in 1974. You can order a Telecaster body with two humbucker routings without any problem. That was not even conceived of back in the early ’70s, so Duncan had to put a lot of work into this guitar. Finding a pickguard with humbucker cut-outs is also no big deal today.
If you want to come close to this guitar, you should choose a Telecaster body made of ash or swamp ash, and a 1-piece maple neck. You also need a stop-bar tailpiece, an ABR-1 bridge, and a standard Telecaster control plate with master volume, master tone, and a standard 3-way pickup selector switch. You can choose any PAF humbucker copy that is close to the ’59 specs—a standard two-conductor wiring will be fine. In the original guitar, the pickups do not have a metal cover, exposing their zebra bobbin arrangement. It’s important to also use pickups without metal covers if you want to get as close as possible. Duncan used 500k pots for volume and tone, along with a 0.047uF tone cap and a standard Telecaster 3-way wiring: bridge/bridge + neck in parallel/neck.
You can use any standard Telecaster wiring diagram for this. It’s a normal Telecaster wiring with two humbuckers—no split, no series switching, no phasing or any other gimmicks. Naturally, you can tweak the wiring to your taste and implement some mods and add-ons. Beck was happy with the guitar the way it was, so it was never modified.
2. The Fender Jeff Beck Stratocaster
The development of the Jeff Beck Stratocaster dates back to 1986 and went on for several years. In 1991, the first series of the Jeff Beck Stratocaster was available—a more or less upgraded version of the Strat Plus, featuring an alder body, a deep C-shape neck with a rosewood fretboard, a Wilkinson roller nut (replaced in 1993 with the LSR roller nut), Sperzel locking tuners (replaced in 1994 with Schaller locking tuners), a two-point tremolo, Lace Sensor Gold single-coil pickups and a HB Lace Sensor Dually at the bridge, and a TBX tone circuit affecting the middle and bridge pickups, plus a mini coil-split push-push button for the bridge-position humbucking pickup.
In 2001, the guitar was updated with Fender Hot Noiseless pickups and a classic tone control, a contoured heel, and locking tuners. In 2004, the Fender Custom Shop released the Jeff Beck Signature Stratocaster with almost identical specs as the 2001 series.
Beck also played other Strats over the years—too many to cover them all. All the materials you would need to build a copy of the two versions mentioned above are readily available today. The wiring of the second version is a standard Stratocaster wiring with a 5-way switch, master volume, and two tone controls. We will talk about the very special wiring of the first version in a future column, along with the wiring of the Fender Strat Plus.
3. The Jeff Beck Esquire
When Seymour Duncan presented Beck with the Tele-Gib hybrid guitar in 1974, it was meant as a gift by Duncan. But a few days after Seymour Duncan gave the guitar to Beck, the guitarist’s manager showed up at the Soundhouse with a wild mixture of three guitar bodies and three necks, from which Beck wanted Duncan to pick one as a gift in return. Duncan chose an Esquire and started putting it back together.
The Fender Esquire with the serial number 1056 was from 1954, and it’s the one Beck played during his stint with the Yardbirds in 1965 and 1966. You can hear this guitar on the Yardbirds’ “Heart Full of Soul,” “Train Kept a-Rollin’,” and “I’m a Man.”
The guitar underwent some modifications, the most obvious of which was on the body. It was sanded down and contoured on the front and back like a Stratocaster, exposing the bare wood in spots. The original neck was also changed for whatever reason, and when Duncan received the guitar, it had a neck from 1956. It’s not clear if the Esquire was already modified when Beck bought it back in 1964 or if Beck modified it.
“The Fender Esquire with the serial number 1056 was from 1954, and it’s the one Beck played during his stint with the Yardbirds in 1965 and 1966.”
The basic features of this guitar are a blonde-finished ash body, contoured like a Stratocaster, a 1-piece maple neck with a soft V-shape, a black Bakelite pickguard, an original Fender pickup from 1954, and standard Esquire/Telecaster hardware. The guitar had an extremely light weight of only 6 pounds.
Building a copy should be no problem at all. The original guitar still belongs to Seymour Duncan and is displayed in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in the exact same condition as in 1974.
Another interesting modification is the wiring of this guitar, sporting 250k volume and tone pots and a traditional 3-way pickup selector switch along with the single bridge pickup. In Beck’s Esquire, the 3-way switch is wired like this:
- #1: volume control with a cap only, no tone control
- #2: volume control with a cap and tone control with its tone cap
- #3: volume control only with no cap and no tone control
Sounds familiar? Of course! It is a kind of in-between wiring from the original Fender Esquire circuit and what became famous as the “Eldred wiring” later on. We talked about both of these wirings in detail in the past, but the one in Beck’s Esquire is unique, so I will provide you with the wiring diagram if you want to get as close as possible.
Sadly, we don’t know about the capacitance of the two caps. It’s said that it has a 0.05uF tone cap and a 0.003uF cap in line with the pickup, which sounds plausible to me. Modern versions will read 0.047uF and 0.0033uF, but don’t worry, they will work fine. So here we go:
Fig. 1
That’s it! Next month, we will have a closer look into the treble-bleed network versus booster/fuzz problem and how to solve it, so stay tuned! Until then ... keep on modding!