Mounting Franz single-coils

john_kidder

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Walter, Hans, anyone else with expertise:

I've recently picked up two excellent condition Franz p'ups. I intend to rePlace the humbuckers in my '54 X-400.

Questions:
I've heard some (Walter?) suggest mounting them out of phase, so that hum is reduced when both p'ups are switched on. Common practice? DOes it work? Are there negative effects - I'm wondering, since I run the guitar through an old ungrounded Thunderstar, whether I'll get even worse hum on one pickup if only the one is switched in?

There are various comments about trimming capacitors - reasons? effects?

And any other general advice you all can give me will be very much appreciated.

Thanks all,
 

Walter Broes

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john_kidder said:
Questions:
I've heard some (Walter?) suggest mounting them out of phase, so that hum is reduced when both p'ups are switched on. Common practice? DOes it work? Are there negative effects - I'm wondering, since I run the guitar through an old ungrounded Thunderstar, whether I'll get even worse hum on one pickup if only the one is switched in?
Hey John,
I saw that you won that pair of pickups on Ebay, congratulations. There are no caps soldered to those pickups to trim - that's the mickey mouse pickups.

First of all - get your amp grounded!! No reason whatsoever to play through an ungrounded amp.
If your pair of pickups is reverse phase/reverse polarity, they'll be humcancelling when both are selected - I'm pretty sure you can achieve that by flipping magnets and switching coil wires, though I've never bothered myself, a little single coil hum never bothered me.

Connecting the pickups "just" out of phase will achieve nothing except that typical out of phase sound when both are selected, and that is an acquired tase - it can be nice for blues, but I personally prefer the in-phase sound.
 

john_kidder

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Me too - I bought a broken T-100DP a while ago, but only the neck pickup works - getting the other rewound might cost about as much as getting Lindy Fralin or someone to make new ones - I may find a '50s Guild that's had a newer p'up installed, replace it with the Franz, and resell.

These will go on my New York guitar - with luck, they'll make even my hacker's attempts sound a little better.

Walter: thanks for the prompt about getting the amp grounded. I will get it done, but I live in a 1905 house, and my music room is still wired with antique (non-grounded) wiring, so grounding the amp for use in here is not very helpful.

Furher tips about re-installing these pickups still most welcome.

Thanks all,
 

Walter Broes

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Hey John, getting a pickup rewound is usually not expensive at all, even the "boutique guys" like Fralin and Lollar charge a lot less for it than they do for a new pickup.
Always worth checking too if a pickup can't be repaired before rewinding it entirely.

Re: putting the working Franz pickups you have on your guitar - nothing more to it than soldering them in and mounting them to the guitar if it hasn't been hacked too badly for the humbuckers. Also worth noting that on every Franz-equipped Guild I ever played, the neck pickup poles line up exactly with the "24th fret harmonic" - I'm pretty sure that's where they belong too, because it's a great sound.

I like 500K pots with those pickups, I can email you a schematic too for a harness if you need one.
 

john_kidder

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Thanks Walter. A schematic would be very helpful indeed.

And I'll check out the cost of rewinding - that's very helpful information.

Cheers,
 
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Glad you got those, John -- I was watching, too!

My '54 X-440 has had this done to it sometime in the past. I've never opened it up to see how it was done -- I got this in a trade from Billy D. Light, so maybe he'll chime in to offer more info.

It's not a crucial change, but it is kind of handy. The hum is only completely canceled when the volumes are equal, of course.
 

john_kidder

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Nice to hear from you, Smiert. Do you actually notice the hum cancellation effect, or is it mostly a theoretical benefit?

I have to admit that, much as I'm looking forward to the sound of the Franz's (I did love my '56 X-50), I know that people invented humbuckers for a reason. And being a kind of a techie at heart (although without qualifications), I've generally been a sucker for the latest/fastest/lightest/etc. An "early adopter", the marketers call me. Is this going to be worthwhile, going "backwards" like this?


Cheers all,
 

billydlight

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Chiming In!

Hey there, I always pot my pickups and reverse the polarity. It completely cancels any single coil noise in the middle position. The way to do it is take out the NECK pickup out. Slightly loosen the screws on the bottom of the pickup that hold the plate on, gently push the Magenets about halfway out. Pull each magnet out one at a time and turn it 180 degrees so polarity is reversed. If you played it now the pickups would sound out of phase. Then you revese the leads on the pickup so the what was the hot is now the ground. Now the pickups are back in phase and hum cancelling in the middle position. The reason you do it on the NECK pickup is that its unlikely the strings will hit the polepieces there and ground out your signal. It REALLY kills the hum. Smiert will tell you. No hum.

BTW the Franz coils sound 1000 times better than any humbucker IMO that's Guilds Gibsons or Gretsches :twisted:
 
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Ah, glad Billy showed up to describe the details. Thanks!

I do notice the hum-canceling effect, though my use of the switch and pot settings might mitigate that a bit:

I almost always have the switch in the middle, and adjust the relative volumes between the two. I'm nearly always somewhere between 70/30 and 30/70 neck/bridge. The hum-canceling is very strong at 50/50 (or at full volume on both pots), but tapers off as you turn down one pickup. It's still very useful, though. One way to deal with this issue is to set your pickup polepiece heights so that your optimal in-between sound is at a level where the pots are at the same relative setting or wide open. That may or may not actually be at a point of uniform volume between the two pickups -- though it's probably close enough in any case.

Looking forward to seeing how this guitar comes together with the new pickups!
 

john_kidder

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Theproject is delayed, and just getting underway - my best luthier here in town, Paul Iverson, is overtaxed - repetitive strain injury has slowed him down almost to a stop. But I trust his work so much that I'm going to wait for him a while longer. Another excellent guitar tech, Scott Mowbray, is going to work on the pickups, caps and harness next week.

I'll keep all posted, for sure.
 

john_kidder

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Just chatting in a private e-mail with new member Super Mic-Mac. He asked if Franz's are noisy, so I'm directing him to this thread.

My good luthier Paul Iverson's still injured. So the restoration still hasn't started.

But: as I get around more with the X-400, I sure do get a lot of compliments on the tone - other players (much more accomplished than me, not that that takes a lot) say things like "that's the bext jazz guitar I've ever played/heard". I took the pickups out the other day to see how much wood was lost in the routing (some, but Paul can deal with it easily), and I find that the pickups are the fabled Gibson patent humbuckers.

Now I'm feeling hesitant - give me a little Franz boost again, guys. Am I really going to be happier with the original pickups? I play mostly swing and jazz tunes, I like a clean jazz sound, no overdrive, just a little crunch on a a sharp attack. I know the pickups will make the guitar happier and it will look much better, but what about the playing of it?
 

john_kidder

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Right now, an early 80s Roland JC-55.

But tubes will be the way I want to go. I'm having my Thunderbass and the T1-12 thoroughly worked up. THe T1-12 sounds very nifty already, but may need to be recapped (variations in volume). I think I'll mostly use it - it's quick and portable. I'll save the Thunderbass and the Guild/Hartke 2x10 cabinet for a few larger events.
 

billydlight

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You probably won't like the Franz's. I will take them off your hands. :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:
 

Walter Broes

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Hmm...I don't really know what to say. I've never liked humbuckers, and all my guitars are single-coil. Then again, I play rock and roll, R&B, Rockabilly, Honky-Tonk Country, and never with a squeaky clean tone, and the Franz pickups are perfect for that.

I do think a Franz neck pickup would be a beautiful tone for Jazz though, as when well set up, they have that rare combination of clarity and warmth. The tone control should take care of any twang you wouldn't want for Jazz I guess. I'd go ahead and put the Franzes on there, they're a totally different beast than the humbuckers and will take some time to adjust to, but I think you'll like them. Like any single coil pickup, they do of course hum, but not more than most others.

I was asking what amp you'll be playing it through because if you were to use a small-ish tube amp, you might run into clean headroom problems with those pickups, as they do have a slight midrange bump that likes to overdrive an amp (sort of like a Gibson P90, but a little less so)

While the Gibson humbuckers people attribute magic qualities to are the pre-patent-number "Patent Applied for" stickered ones (and they go for *obscene* prices!), patent N° pickups are bringing more and more money too, so if you'd still want a humbucker guitar, selling those two pickups might get you well on the way to what a single humbucker second hand Westerly X150 would cost.....
 

Walter Broes

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Darryl Hattenhauer said:
When did people start figuring out how to cancel hum by reversing magnets etc?
Not sure about a date, but there were plenty of humbucking pickups around even before WWII.
 
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