Dummy coils from existing pickups?

english_bob

I have a Recording King lap steel with a P90 pickup. I love it, but boy does that pickup hum. I was planning to replace the pickup with a noiseless P90 but it occurred to me that I have some Tele pickups sitting in a box not being used. Is it possible to wire up a dummy coil using an existing pickup? If so, will it be effective?

Or would I be better off just shelling out for a new pickup now and saving myself a massive ball-ache?

ICBM

You would need to remove the magnets, and if they're traditional-construction Tele pickups with the wire wound directly onto the magnets you can't do that without very probably breaking the coil. If they're truly scrap cheapos, it may be worth the risk.

A dead humbucker with one working coil would be a much easier source, you just take off the working coil and remove the polepieces.

english_bob

Supposing I found a suitable source coil. How would I go about making it in to an actual dummy coil?

WezV

wire it up so its on at the same time as the existing pickup.   series or parallel will work but you may prefer one over the other.  I would try series first.  It needs to be reverse phase to the main pickup, if it still hums or doesn't sounds right swap the wires on the dummy coil and try again

aim for a resistance similar to the other pickup to give you the most humcancelling, but a lower value will be better than a higher one and will change the tone less

it will change the sound, so if you love the sound of the pickup in there now learn to love the noise too

rpr

Not sure if this of use, but I have a RW/RP strat pickup from an Ibanez going free-I think its fairly high output. I had to cut the hook up wires really short, cos I need some to complete another wiring job.Simple enough to extend them.

 If it is of use, let me know and I'll pop it in the post for you.