Help with new pickup crackling.

CloudNine

Hoping one of you wise forumites can advise me on something. 

Bought a Fralin SP42 pickup to go in the bridge of a Tele. (It's a 1 pickup guitar). It is meant to be like a P90 in a single coil size, or as near as you can get anyway. 

It has adjustable polepieces and I noticed that as soon as I tried raising one for the first time, to see how it changed sound, the guitar crackled. I Screwed it back down and the crackling went away...

There looked like there was a bit of wax that came out as you raised the polepiece, wondering if that has anything to do with it??

I know bugger all about pickups, so any thoughts would be welcome.

Van_Hayden

Depending on the construction it could be a problem with the structure of the bobbin, does it have a fibre (traditional looking, Matt) top plate? If its a solid plastic bobbin you won't have a problem with this but the fibre top and bottom plates can detach from the centre block with the screws turning. I suspect there's some movement causing the crackles, if it works leave it alone!

ICBM

Check that there isn't a tiny bit of metal - like a fragment of wire wool or a scraping from one of the screw heads - stuck to the top of one of the magnets. If this touches the string as it vibrates it will make a nasty crackle. Sometimes they're so fine they're hard to see, but I've come across this more times than I can remember!

CloudNine

Cheers guys. I actually think it is an overall grounding issue now. Seems to crackle and hiss regardless of polepiece being moved. And can't see any metal fragments etc.

The original pickup was vintage style with the big metal base plate, whereas the new Fralin does not have that, just magnets at the bottom. I think the ground has been wired up incorrectly by the guy who replaced it.

Might be coming in the direction of your shop (ICBM) in the very near future to get sorted!