P90's horrible humm

F

Flyingmd

Member
Hi All,
Strange problem was hoping someone had some imsight into what might be going on. I have a 55 Reissue les paul with p90's. Through my Mesa mark V it is clean as can be with almost no buzz or humm. The same guitar through my axe fx II into my QSC K12 sitting right next to my amplifier, I get a horrible humm, so much so that the guitar is unusable with the axe. I know p90's can be noisy at times, but it is dead quiet through my boogie, especially on middle position/both pickups. I never had an noise issues with any other of my guitars through the axe. Quit the contrary, the axe has proved to be much quieter noise wise than any guitar amplifier i ever played/heard. This is happening on all of my presets, even the clean ones. In all the months ive had the axe, this is actually the first time i played the p90's through it. I hope it wont have to be the last. Any idea?
 
Flyingmd said:
Hi All,
Strange problem was hoping someone had some imsight into what might be going on. I have a 55 Reissue les paul with p90's. Through my Mesa mark V it is clean as can be with almost no buzz or humm. The same guitar through my axe fx II into my QSC K12 sitting right next to my amplifier, I get a horrible humm, so much so that the guitar is unusable with the axe. I know p90's can be noisy at times, but it is dead quiet through my boogie, especially on middle position/both pickups. I never had an noise issues with any other of my guitars through the axe. Quit the contrary, the axe has proved to be much quieter noise wise than any guitar amplifier i ever played/heard. This is happening on all of my presets, even the clean ones. In all the months ive had the axe, this is actually the first time i played the p90's through it. I hope it wont have to be the last. Any idea?
Click to expand...

That's P90's for you. I have used P90 for years and they sound fantastic, but at some gigs the hum from those pickups rendered the guitar unusable and I would have to use another guitar for the show. I have a Les Paul special that originally had Gibson P100's ( a stacked humbucker) that were quiet but they were a bit lifeless compared to P90's. I have Kinmans P90Hx pickups in the guitar now and they are the quietest pickups available and sound like the real deal. Through the AxeFx they are dead quiet too. It isn't the Axe!! With P90's your proximity to just about any electrical device will cause noise. Will never bother with them again. Kinman's require a deeper rout in the guitar body to fit them though. I posted a clip on youtube with the LP Special and AxeFX 2 a while ago. If your interested, look for Kinman P90Hx pickups It's a Hi Watt patch and Fane speakers in the Pete Townsend sort of style. Good luck with whatever you decide.
 
Thanks ys. I was afraid of that. Ill check imto the kinmans. How dovthey compare to the lindy fralin p90's? Those were another set recommended.
 
Flyingmd said:
Thanks ys. I was afraid of that. Ill check imto the kinmans. How dovthey compare to the lindy fralin p90's? Those were another set recommended.
Click to expand...

I don't know to be honest, but "the" premier guitar repairer/builder here in Australia said the Kinman P90Hx was a work of art, he was amazed at the engineering in these pickups . I have got Kinman Tele and strat pickups in my other guitars and they are just superb, as good as it gets.( low string pull, full of vintage tone, great with distortion... and noiseless!!) And when I say noiseless I mean as quiet as a pickup can be. The dilemma for you will be routing a 55 reissue which may affect resale. However, guitars must be functional first IMHO. Will you keep it? that's the question. I think about these things like the AxeFx2. I never thought I'd be saying this about a guitar processor, but ..if Jimi H was alive I reckon he'd be using the AxeFx2. He was always into new imaginative gear and the Axe is charting new territory all the time. He would embrace it and do things with it that no one else would have imagined could have been done. That's why Cliff's a legend too!!!!
 
I'm a big fan of Kinman.

Yeah, single coil pickups anywhere near computers, transformers, any EMF will be noisy. The old neon bar signs were really bad.
 
My LP Custom with some hot custom wound P90's does the same thing. Way more hum than any of my strats, but its also a lot hotter pickup than any of my strats so that is to be expected to some degree. Still, I agree, more hum via the Axe than many amps I've owned.

As long as I'm playing its not bad though, and sounds great, but if there are any unique issues with the Axe, I'd be curious to hear them as well.
 
This means there is a magnetic field being generated by either the Axe-Fx or the monitors or something else that isn't there when using the Boogie.

P90s are single-coil pickups and therefore suffer from magnetic interference. Magnetic fields are caused by currents in a loop. The hum you hear from a single-coil pickup is the AC power creating a magnetic field that is generating a voltage in the pickups.

Typically you can find the offending source by using your guitar as an antenna and moving it around.

The key to minimizing magnetic fields is to minimize the loop area. Ideally the current going into a device should exit the device on "neutral" conductor. If, for some reason, the return current is flowing through the safety ground you may generate a large magnetic field. Return current should never flow in a safety ground except under a fault condition.

Some old houses have very poor wiring where the AC line and neutral are not run as pairs. This invariably causes extreme current loops.
 
I've only used my two P90-equipped LPs at home, and I've not experienced any noise problems at all. Now, as others have said, single coils are susceptible to any number of fields in different environments. But for me, at least here at home, they sound terrific.
 
Flyingmd said:
Hi All,
Strange problem was hoping someone had some imsight into what might be going on. I have a 55 Reissue les paul with p90's. Through my Mesa mark V it is clean as can be with almost no buzz or humm. The same guitar through my axe fx II into my QSC K12 sitting right next to my amplifier, I get a horrible humm, so much so that the guitar is unusable with the axe. I know p90's can be noisy at times, but it is dead quiet through my boogie, especially on middle position/both pickups. I never had an noise issues with any other of my guitars through the axe. Quit the contrary, the axe has proved to be much quieter noise wise than any guitar amplifier i ever played/heard. This is happening on all of my presets, even the clean ones. In all the months ive had the axe, this is actually the first time i played the p90's through it. I hope it wont have to be the last. Any idea?
Click to expand...

I had a similar problem with single coils. When my Axe and my monitors were plugged into the same wall outlet, I would get a ton of hum. I believe it was a ground loop hum, because when I plugged the monitors into an outlet on the other side of the room, the hum went away. I didn't physically move the monitors themselves, I just pulled the power cord and plugged into a different outlet.
 
I went with the Kinman P90x over the Fralins because the Fralins are just a modified humbucker (I believe that it's a sidewinder configuration) which to me loses the single coil character too much. I went through a lot of headache trying to alleviate the hum. Anything that used humbucker techniques sounded like a humbucker at the end of the day.

The other thing about the Kinman is that there are over 200 individual components (they're quite heavy too) that together create a system that just works. That's not a repackaged humbucker trying to be a single coil; it's a filtering system of some kind and it's the only one that I've found that retains that P90 bite without the noise.
 
I'm struggling with the same problem. In fact, I have a hollowbody 7 string that I'm considering just going the EMG route, to avoid all the noise (and help clean up the low B/A string).

Check out the Lace Alumitones too. Much less expensive than the Kinmans. People seem to have a love/hate relationship with Alumitones though, but I liked them in my Carvin. Which, coincidentally, was fully shielded with copper tape.

Good shielding in the guitar along with solid grounding (both strongly recommended by Kinman), will help a lot. In some cases, it may even eliminate the need for noiseless pickups. Visit guitarnuts.com for detailed info, or check out the Kinman website.

Builders need to get on board. In this day and age, noise is more of a problem than it ever has been. It's time for pickup technology to catch up. (It's started, but there's a long, long way to go.) If the builders demand it, technology will have to improve.

Traditional pickup technology really should go the way of...

wait for it...


TUBE AMPS! lol
 
I use the Ilitch hum canceling system on my Strat and it works quite well. It got rid of my hum by 80%. They have many different system that might work for you. You can have a tech install it for you or do it yourself like I did.
 
Im gonna order a pair of the Kinmans. Even though its a reissue, it isnt one of the more expensive reissues and i love the feel and playablility of this 55 so i am not worried about "devaluing" it. In the interim, i will experiment with different positions of the axe and K12's within the room and diferrent length cords. Its a relatively new home so im not sure I can blame it on old wiring but Fractals input is greatly appreciated and i will try those suggestions. I would have thought that the amplifier would be more of an issue than the axe but you just never know!
 
I've never tried a hum canceling sc/P90 pickup that sounds really true to the original design.
BUT there is a lot of pup's i haven't tried, of course.
 
I have Kinman's in my Strat right now.

They come into their own for me when I roll back the guitar vol and tone controls and find that sweet spot. Wide open they don't quite have the vintage vibe. Using the Dumble sim in the AxeFx with the bridge pup and tone rolled way down... truly amazing how beefy that is with the bridge pup!

I find the in between positions 2, 4 not to have as much quack as a good vintage Strat though.

Overall the noise level is way lower (not non-existent though). And the Kinman's don't seem to change their noise level when you change the position of the guitar like real SC's can do.
 
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