P90 noise

suspiciousminds

Posting this for a mate who's got a Fender jaguar modern player with 2 stock p90's.
He's had it set up properly but the pickups are very noisy - the poles have been highered and lowered but it makes no difference, theres a lot of background hum etc.
Any suggestions as to what he can do?
I've compared it against the p90's in my LPJ and they do seem quite noisy in comparison?

samzadgan

Interesting...i tried one in the shop and had the same issue...the guy said its because of the fluorescent lights.

I have an SG with P90 and it was never that noisy.

It may be pickups...it may be that some copper tape will fix it...,

Jalapeno

Or he's got some noisy dimmer switches (my dining room light is a right pain on that front).

JookyChap

It might have been a one off, but I looked at one of those for a mate who had the same problem and it didn't have an earth wire to the bridge (if it is the ToM one, anyway). Daft, but might be worth checking.

suspiciousminds

Did the earth wire cure it?

JookyChap

It certainly helped

jaygtr

I think I remember seeing Phil x say if you gig a guitar with p-90's always take along a spare with humbuckers, because in some venues you just can't get rid of the hum whatever you do.

jd0272

I find my LP Jnr to be no more noisy than my Esquire. Nature if the tool and all that. Might try the copper tape tho myself.

ESBlonde

The noise of P90s was exactly why Seth Lover developed the Humbucking pickup.

koneguitarist

I use single coils, tele's, P90's etc, never had any problem with noise, only my playing !

WezV

P-90's are quite noisy, but if you like the tone you learn to live with it. 

 

I have a hatred of fender p-90's after buying a set of  black doves years ago.   they had this terrible design which meant the coil wire travelling  through  a few mm of empty air space to get to the eyelet from the bobbin.  they also used a smaller bobbin (badly deformed from poor winding) that didn't fill the p-90 case so would always fall out  the plastic when removing from the guitar.

these 2 slight design issues meant I managed to snap the coil connection on both pickups.

 

WezV

here they are, admittedly this was after a few months of rattling around in a drawer after they broke the first time from holding them in the wrong place.  But you can see why this might be a particularly noisy pickup if they are all made this badly

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e31/WezV/new/BD1.jpg

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e31/WezV/new/bd2.jpg

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e31/WezV/new/bd3.jpg

suspiciousminds

Thx for the replies - he's gonna look at the extra wire for earth and see if that helps.