single coil hum on spectrum sx

Hi. Just wondered if any one experiences quite bad him on the single coils on there spectrums. I only have a strat to compare it to and that has a dummy coil under the scratch plate so that's a lot more quiet. The noise is only on the of channel - the him seems OK on the clean channel.

Another thing is when I have the phase reverse active - the volume drops and the sound seems brittle - is this normal

Single coils are noisy.

Humbuckers are not.

Out of phase sounds thin and brittle.

What Colt said! He's right, that's the nature of it all.

I have to say that the single on my Spectrum FX is really nice by itself, wasn't too noisy and sounds great! I had a 5 way switch on it where I could do that. Now in the stock configurations you can't have the single coils all by themselves. So therefore you will hear it being a little more quiet in conjunction with the Humbuggies.

Great, thanks its what I suspected but good to have it confirmed. I have a 5 way selector too which I thought allowed single coils without the bucker. I'm not to convinced by the single coils at the moment but I'll spend a bit more time with them before making a decision to swap em out.

Stefan 4 wrote:...I'll spend a bit more time with them before making a decision to swap em out.

Single coils are your friend.
They have a sound all their own that you can only be approximated on a Humbucker coil split. It's what makes a Strat a Strat, and as for P90's in anything, well....! Uncle Mats used 'em for a reason.

The sx is a s/s/h configuration and I love the bucker on it (I think its an mmk45 - I'll know for certain soon cos I'm popping it out to check ) but as far as the single coil tone - I'll go for my strat over the sx at the moment. But what I'm not looking for in the sx is a strat tone, I'm hoping to get some thing that a strat can't deliver. More playing required

Yup.

I've discussed this subject in other posts - nothing sounds like a strat except a strat.

I used to try to use super strats - normally with HSS pickup configuration, to get a rock tone out of the bridge humbucker and then get strat sounds out of the single coils. I was never happy with the compromise. But this was when I was using 24 fret neck superstrats like Jackson and Charvel.

With a 21-22 fret neck super strat, you really can have pretty much the best of both worlds. You can rock out with the bridge humbucker, and the neck and middle pups sound like a strat.

It's quite difficult to reproduce strat switch position 1 and 2 tones with a super strat. You would need a humbucker that actually sounded like a strat bridge pickup when the coil is split. Matsumoku had the unbalanced coil humbucker to achieve this, and SD has the P-Rails pickup. But with most humbuckers - you will never get there on switch positions 1 and 2.

Having said all this - your single coil pup might be noisier than it needs to be. And you might get strattier sounds with different single coils - as long as you don't have a 24 fret neck.

P.S. I have achieved super strat bliss - finally - with a Warmoth alder body, Warmoth 22 fret maple/rosewood neck, JB in the bridge, and SD true single coils in the neck and middle. It won't do strat in switch positions 1 and 2 - and I don't really care as I don't really use them all that much anyway - but the JB does what it does and switch positions 3, 4, and 5 are all strat! And if you don't use switch positions 1 & 2 very much, a simple single-coil sized humbucker from SD or DM or whoever might just give you enough rock tone for the bridge. These little humbuckers don't sound exactly like their full-size cousins, but they are convincing enough for live gigs and noodling around the house.

Barry wrote:

Stefan 4 wrote:...I'll spend a bit more time with them before making a decision to swap em out.

Single coils are your friend...

Hmm, in light of having recently acquired an SX myself Stefan I think I need to amend my earlier comments. I now find myself more in agreement with you on the noisy singe coils in this model! They are in fact very microphonic and not at all as smooth and tasty as say, my Concord or my GT.
See my thread HERE