pick-up squeel!!!!

[jubjub]

Hi there. I'm playing a tele which I realy like and I don't want to go to humbuckers unless I absolutley have, to but at high gain and high vol the squeel is ridiculous. I've heared about waxing your pick-ups. Does it work? How do you do it?

[Peter Snowberg]

I don't know if potting (waxing) your pickups is the answer, but it sure will cut out microphonics.

I've done it a few times with different waxes using candle wax and canning paraffin from the supermarket which worked fine, but I also saw a post from somebody who mentioned using the wax rings used to secure toilets to the drain pipe. That's a much cheaper source and I think it's all beeswax (Sorry, I don't remember who to give proper credit to). I suppose ski wax would be a good one too

To pot your pickups, unsolder them and remove the covers. Heat up a small pot of wax so that there's enough to submerge the pickups. Make sure it doesn't get too hot and start smoking. Set the pickups in the molten wax for 1/2 to 1 hour so that the entire pickup gets a chance to heat up and accept the wax. After that, remove them from the pot and let 'em cool off.

When you reassemble them you also have the option of adding additional shielding, but keep in mind that some say this affects the sound. I've never heard anything but good results doing this.

One rewinder mentioned never adding shielding directly on top of the magnet wire, but always using a couple layers of Gaff tape or cloth bandage tape to provide a spacer. Add a ground wire to the shield, and reassemble the pickup.

There you go.... no microphonics and less hum.

Good luck!
-Peter

[jubjub]

Great. I'm on it. Will let you know how it goes and if it solves the problem. Any other sugestions ?

[aron]

Unlike Peter, it's never worked for me; not with my old Tele or Mustang.

At some point, if you have enough volume etc.... I think the pickup will squeal.

[smoguzbenjamin]

Basic feedback ain't it? Speaker makes a noise, pickup 'hears' it, sends it to be amplified, comes out of the speaker..... etc etc etc. I heard of having a pickup with no magnets mounted beside the regular pickup (like a humbucker) but under the scratchplate, with the coil going the other way. It'll reduce hum for sure, don't know about feedbacking... :?

[Peter Snowberg]

Aron's post just reminded me of a bad squeel I had while building an amp. The source was actually the signal coming from the speaker wires feeding back into the 1st stage of the amp. Before you go through the full gyrations, make sure that isn't where your noise is coming from. Try routing the guitar cable in different places to avoid any speaker coil field pickup.

I've never had squeel from a loud amp directly affecting a pickup, but I don't play at volume 11.... my ears just can't take it. Potting has helped microphonic noise (I've only owned cheap guitars with garbage pickups), and shielding has helped on the hum too.

Take care,
-Peter

[aron]

Basic feedback ain't it?

I dunno, must be, but microphonic feedback is HORRIBLE! Piercingly loud and high pitched. arghhhhh.

I really hated those days!

[smoguzbenjamin]

My pickups are still microphonic, Aron You tap the bodywork of my guitar and you'll hear it through the amp

But I'm too lazy to wax my pickups... I should do that sometime though...

[Travis]

Potting the pickups in beeswax:
http://www.guitarnuts.com/technical/electrical/index.php

The same site has some nice info on shielding, as well.

Good luck.  Microphonic pickups suck for anything other than squealing.

[Gilles C]

I love this forum...  

Last week, somebody gave my friend a guitar to check because it was screeming with the volume of its guitar past 5. It also had a screw missing on one of the pick-ups, etc...

I told my friend to check it with his amp first.

And it was the same on my friend's amp than on the owner's amp.

So it really was the guitar. I was suspecting a bad contact in the volume pot, or the switches...

After reading you guys, I think I'll tell him it could REALLY be the pick-ups. It's a cheap Strat copy, so...

Keep-on posting guys  :lol:

[jubjub]

To be as precise as possable, when i'm loud and playing away the actual tone is realy nice. But as sonn as i stop playing...SQUEEL!!!
It makes a difference when I turn away from the amp and sometimes I can find a quiet spot, but rarely, and when it goes past a certain volume there is no hope. Frequency is between 10-12k. Right up there. The thing is I prefer the sound of the lower output pickups. I've just sold a set of Danny Gattons cause I never realy got on with em. It would just be nice to solve this prob or am I asking to change the laws of physics. Am going to do the wax thing. Fingers crossed

[RDV]

I've got a Teisco guitar that is so microphonic you can sing through the pickups!

Potting works really well for that sort of thing, BUT YOU MUST BE CAREFUL NOT TO GET THE WAX TOO HOT FOR YOU CAN MELT THE INSULATION FROM YOUR PICKUP WINDINGS, WHICH MEANS GOODBYE PICKUPS. A candy thermometer can help, just don't let the wax get over 150 degrees farenheit(sorry I don't know what that is in celsius). Leave them in the wax(minus the covers) till bubbles stop coming to the surface, and you're done.

RDV

[Mark Hammer]

Reducing microphonic squeal is as frequent a topic at the "guitar pickups" subforum over at AMPAGE as fuzz boxes are here.  I recommend you check that forum out.  Many of the contributors are professionals, like Jason Lollar (who was very favourably reviewed in last month's Vintage Guitar magazine) and Sheldon Dingwall (reviewed in the same mag a few issues before), who are as generous with their knowledge as many folks here.

[jubjub]

bum.    I'm going to take you up on that advice Mr Hammer, as I've just destroyed my bridge pick-up.  I took off the wax covered string before I popped it in the hot wax and broke the wire. bum.  Neck pick-up worked well tho.  bum.   sorry mr moderators but....bum poo arse bum! :cry:

Off to ebay to see what's on offer. Thanks for all your help.










bum

[Peter Snowberg]

Sorry to hear about the break jubjub.  :cry:

I've done it too. Can you see the end of the wire? I've repaird such breaks before. If the broken end is on the exterior of the coil you can just unwrap a couple of turns. If the break is on the interior end and you can't get to it to repair, save the pieces and see Andrew's article about pickup rewinding. http://www.geocities.com/thetonegod/coil/coil.html

There's much good info out there about this and all is not lost.

Best of luck!

Take care,
-Peter

[jubjub]

Thanks Peter. break is on the inside and now there are 4 loose wires sticking out from my attempts to locate it. Think a set of kinmans are in order but I will definately have a go at re-wiring it later on.
Thanks again everyone for your input.

[petemoore]

Newer ["nice"] pickups are less prone to this than older ones.
 Mfr's generally know all about this, certain type pickups were known for maybe being microphonic, I had a Melody Maker, cool single coil, I could sing through...try shouting in your pickups ear and compare to other pickups in same arrangement...you can find microphonicness this way.
 Modern magnetic application for guitar use is likely to see extremely high volume levels, reputable pickups {imo] for the most part probably won't benefit from potting...[mo could be wrong though]
 A loose winding wiggling at a frequency already accentuated by a setup is what makes the Microphone function work. If the windings are wound 'right', pickup microphonics should not be a problem.
 Volume and frequency responses in the signal chain [from pickups, wood, through the electronics to speaker and air] all play a role in when [at what point] "feedback or / microphonic feedback" occur, [the two can be hard to differentiate from on another] .
 When pickups die is always a drag, I sympathize with your loss.
 The bright side [if there is one] is that you know how to deal with the problem...I think of how stranded I used to be when something failed...now it's not so bad..I know I can get through it and won't shortcut or rip myself off. I hate having to round 'someone' up to work on my guitar, and haven't had to for decades.

[Ammscray]

I've been potting my own and other's p-ups for 20 + years, done hundreds...some facts:

ALWAYS use a double-boiler and never have the pot with the wax in it directly on the heat source...

The best combination and the way they did it in the old days is 70-80 percent paraffin, and the rest real beeswax...you don't ever want to use either one exclusively because paraffin is too brittle by itself and beeswax is too soft by itself...

The longest you want to leave the p-up in is 10 minutes TOPS...if you cake the wax on by leaving it in too long, you'll change the sound of the p-up and risk further damage...just leave it in til the bubbles stop coming out of the coils, and it's done...single-coils can take only a few minutes most of the time and humbuckers a bit longer especially if the cover is still on...

MOST IMPORTANT: NEVER walk away from the boiling wax, the fumes are flammable and I know a guy who had the heat up to high, the fumes caught fire and he doesn't have any eyebrows now for like 10 years...they ain't comin' back and he was lucky...

Anyways the bottom line is you can't turn your amp up high if your p-ups aren't potted so it's a no-brainer, but have somebody else do it if you're unsure of yourself...there's some great  theads on it over at the plexi palace forums too...

be safe

[Paul Marossy]

Just a note about humbuckers. They can be just as microphonic, if not more, than a single coil with a loud amp. (ask me how I know) This is especially true if they are high output ones. I used to have a problem exactly as you initially described with certain pedal combinations. Lowering the gain a little on the really high gain pedals virtually elimated it, along with paying more attention to how I am standing in relation to the amp.

FWIW.

[aron]

You are right Paul. Was it ceramic pickups that squeal the loudest (for humbuckers?) In any case, yep, it's too easy for us to design a distortion pedal that can make guitars squeal!