Anybody have experience with dummy coils?

[Tyrannocaster]

Long ago, I used to use a Rickenbacker steel guitar pickup with a horseshoe magnet in my Telecaster; I had it professionally routed, and he did a great job, with height adjustment screws and springs - very slick. All this because it was the age of dinosaurs, and there weren't any aftermarket pickups for a Telecaster that would do what I wanted then. It is a really interesting looking setup, and the only one of its kind I've ever seen.

Anyway, I still have the pickup and the routed body. The reason I stopped using the thing was simple: hum. The Rick pup is powerful (or it was - after so many years, the magnet probably needs to be revitalized, since they didn't use the best magnets then) but man, the single coil hum is unbearable; it's bad.

But it occurred to me that perhaps a dummy coil might be useful here. I have watched all the Youtube videos I can find, which is a frustrating experience; most people say it works, but drops the volume and changes the tone too much, some people say it works and there's no difference (it's PERFECT!), and some people just show you what they did and don't say anything about the results, LOL. I tend to believe the first bunch, but I'd like to hear if anybody has already gone through all this. I have room for a dummy under the pickguard, since I routed a hole for a middle pickup a long time ago.

Thoughts?

 

[Rick]

Never thought of doing that, but it makes sense.

 

[mayfly]

don't know too much about dummy coils, but I REALLY want to see this tele of yours!!

 

[Tyrannocaster]

Lol, right now it wouldn't be very interesting; it has a standard bridge and Tele pickup at the moment, sitting over a vast routed space. The guy did a really nice job - I can use the standard bridge with no problem other than the visual, which creates two gaps on either side of the bridge plate. He sawed off the original bridge so I would have a bridge with no Tele cutout, and I still have that, too - at least I think I do. I better look!

If I put it back together, I'll certainly post pix.

 

[drewfx]

Dummy coils essentially add winds to the PU but don't pickup the strings, so it can affect the tone adversely. The 2 main ways of avoiding/minimizing this are:

1. Use onboard preamps to buffer the dummy coil and PU's. This is what Alembic does.
2. Use a coil with less winds but with the winds spread over a wider area, making it a more efficient antenna for the noise.

 

[Tyrannocaster]

#2 would seem to be what Illitch does with its system. I honestly don't think the dummy coil idea must work that well or everybody would be doing it; it's just that I keep seeing references and vids by people (some of them convincing) that seem to say that they do. Color me skeptical!

I looked in my parts bin and found both pieces of the original '69 Tele bridge, so I still have it.

This guy has several vids on dummy coils. In this one, skip to 2:55 for a sound demo. Not a good player, but there doesn't seem to be any hum, and it sounds like a Strat to me:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqkW5fBfC_Y[/youtube]

 

[Tyrannocaster]

Found a picture. Obviously not the Rick pup, but you can see how the guitar is still functional with a regular Tele bridge, too.

 

[Tyrannocaster]

I grabbed an old crappy Stratclone pup out of the junk box; it's almost but not quite the same DC res as the Rick. Took the ceramic magnet off and pushed the polepieces out so there was no stagger on top in case I needed to mount it upside down. Then I wired it to the Rick pup (not attached to a guitar, alas) and experimented with it. When the dummy is upside down and wired in parallel with the Rick, the single coil noise disappears. I have no idea if the two are in phase, and I also don't know how much tone drain there would be. When reversing the wires on the dummy it did not decrease the noise.

Well, it's something to do.  :toothy11:

 

[frown]

There’s a dummy coil in my MIM Deluxe Powerhouse Strat, which is to cancel noise, ala humbucker, as there’s also an active tone boost. At least your Tele has space made for your additional magnets and isn’t just wedged into the standard control cavity!

 

[Tyrannocaster]

Update: I got it together with the dummy coil and got the Rick pup back into the old Tele body. Luckily, I needed to take it apart anyway, because I was going to shield it properly, so it wasn't a waste of time. But the dummy coil is really disappointing. The Rick hums like I remembered, and the dummy does tone it down, but not as much as I had hoped, and the volume drop is pretty unacceptable. It was an experiment, and that was always a possibility. So...now I know that this particular setup doesn't work well at all. Somebody else's dummy coil is probably fabulous, but not this one. I've spent enough time on this. The Rick is going back in the box, this time forever unless I run into another Rick lap steel that needs a pickup.

:dontknow:

 

[Chris Kinman]

I have had half a lifetime of experience with dummy coils and rekon I know a thing or two about them.  Some of that knowledge is here https://kinman.com/dummy-coil-talk.php

CK