I
t’s been 62 years since the Fender
Stratocaster was invented, and for
some damn reason 60-cycle hum is
still a thing we have to deal with. In
the time since the Strat was unveiled
we have sent quite a few human beings
into outer space, eradicated a host
of once-deadly diseases, invented
cars that drive themselves, and most
of us now carry around pocket-sized
supercomputers that also make phone
calls. Miracles abound, my friends!
Humanity has accomplished so many
extraordinary things that have vastly
improved the state of the human
condition, thus it is astonishing to me
that in 2016 I’m sitting here writing an
article about the nagging, tired specter
of single-coil hum, but nevertheless,
here I sit.
In the strictest sense, guitar pickup
hum was actually eliminated quite
early on. Specifically, it was pretty
much toast about the time that
Gibson employee Seth Lover invented
the famous PAF (Patent Applied For)
humbucking pickup in 1955, one year
after the Stratocaster was designed.
One would have thought that would
have been the end of buzzing pickups
forever, but the problem was that the
Gibson humbuckers didn’t sound like
the old Fender single-coils. They had
a pleasing sound of their own that was
darker, hotter, and more muscular,
but a lot of guitarists were hooked on
the sparkling, bell-like tone and open
dynamics of old-school Strat pickups,
and weren’t ready to give up the
signature Strat sound just to get rid of
the hum. Therein lies the predicament.
Ditching the hum while keeping the
tone: this is the crux of the problem
that remains with us to this day, vexing
guitarists and engineers in equal
measure. Many schemes have been
dreamed up for eliminating 60-cycle
hum, but most have had notable
drawbacks, including changes in tone,
sustain, and overall response of the
instrument in question, strange sonic
artifacts, and inconvenient, batterydependent active electronics, among
other things. For most vintage singlecoil enthusiasts, these things are total
deal-breakers. Despite this lengthy
history of failure and compromise,
however, it does seem that the time
is nigh for a real solution. The world’s
tone scientists are tantalizingly close
to cracking the code. We’re not quite
there yet, but there are a handful
of hum-killing, but not tone killing,
problem solvers on the market today
that are damned close to perfect.
Here are our favorite solutions for
preserving the rich vintage single-coil
sound of a Stratocaster style guitar
while minimizing the noise.
ToneReport.com
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