BzzzKill - New Single Coil Hum Canceling Device

Jarick

Jarick

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Been seeing this pop up the last few days and just about ready to order one to try.

It appears to be a passive dummy coil that fits neatly in the control panel of a Strat that gets wired in series with the pickups. Looks easy to install, should work with any real single coils, no batteries, and they have two versions if you have a RWRP middle pickup or not.

$200 is pretty dang reasonable compared to Ilitch and others. I'm guessing it would be optimized for a certain level of Strat output, like 6k or so.



 
Chocol8 said:
I can't watch those guys babble for that long, but it is just another coil, and not exactly a new idea.
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No it's not new, but it does seem like a good drop in design at a fairly reasonable price. I'm not sure there are any other dummy coils that handle both regular and RWRP in one unit.
 
Jarick said:
No it's not new, but it does seem like a good drop in design at a fairly reasonable price. I'm not sure there are any other dummy coils that handle both regular and RWRP in one unit.
Click to expand...

It looks like this one is similar.

ulbrickmusic.com.au

Ulbrick Music

No Buzz - No loss in original guitar tone Ulbrick Guitar Noise Reduction in Melbourne
ulbrickmusic.com.au ulbrickmusic.com.au

 
Jarick said:
No it's not new, but it does seem like a good drop in design at a fairly reasonable price. I'm not sure there are any other dummy coils that handle both regular and RWRP in one unit.
Click to expand...

The only thing special about the single is it is wound on a special bobbin to hopefully fit in a stock or similar Strat cavity better than a standard pickup bobbin would.

The double adds the second coil for the RWRP middle if you have one.

Otherwise, it is a $200 partial pickup with no magnets. It should cost less than a single Strat pickup, IMHO.

The other solutions with less winds but a bigger loop might fit different guitars, but most of those are also priced a bit high for what is essentially just a loop of copper wire.
 
OrganicZed said:
It looks like this one is similar.

ulbrickmusic.com.au

Ulbrick Music

No Buzz - No loss in original guitar tone Ulbrick Guitar Noise Reduction in Melbourne
ulbrickmusic.com.au ulbrickmusic.com.au

Click to expand...


I forgot about that one. Looks like there are a couple on Reverb although monster shipping costs from Australia.

Chocol8 said:
The only thing special about the single is it is wound on a special bobbin to hopefully fit in a stock or similar Strat cavity better than a standard pickup bobbin would.

The double adds the second coil for the RWRP middle if you have one.

Otherwise, it is a $200 partial pickup with no magnets. It should cost less than a single Strat pickup, IMHO.

The other solutions with less winds but a bigger loop might fit different guitars, but most of those are also priced a bit high for what is essentially just a loop of copper wire.
Click to expand...

I'm sure the cost of parts is much cheaper but most of us don't have pickup winders. I don't see anything out there around $200 that can handle RWRP like this does. You can find dummy coils online for $60-100+ but those aren't RWRP. Ilitch systems are $300+.
 
Hold on, in that video, they're connecting the thing between the pickup ground wires and the pot's ground. That's fairly different to how you'd connect a typical dummy coil, isn't it?

Apart from that, this seems to steal pretty little sound.
 
It is normal to wire the dummy coil in series as it tends to have less tone impact but far from zero. That’s why the established products tend to use larger loops. The larger loops with much less turns/wire can have less impedance/resistance which means less impact when put in series.
 
Chocol8 said:
It is normal to wire the dummy coil in series as it tends to have less tone impact but far from zero. That’s why the established products tend to use larger loops. The larger loops with much less turns/wire can have less impedance/resistance which means less impact when put in series.
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Ok, thanks.

Still, the tones the guy in the first video is getting out of his "treated" Strat sound pretty fine to my ears. Most other dummy coils seem to steal quite some more of the single coil chime.
 
I’ve tried to buy from Illitch. First time his site was hacked. Second time he has his credit processor in test mode. Third time there was no purchase buttons anywhere on the site. I begged him to use reverb or eBay and never heard back.

I’m going to give this one a try. I’ll probably put it on a switch to defeat it to see if it makes a difference in tone.
 
Sascha Franck said:
Ok, thanks.

Still, the tones the guy in the first video is getting out of his "treated" Strat sound pretty fine to my ears. Most other dummy coils seem to steal quite some more of the single coil chime.
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My best guess is that he has a capacitor in there so higher frequencies bypass the coil.

The way these things work (with some simplification) is you want the coil area x # turns for the pickup and dummy coil to be roughly equal. The large coil allows significantly fewer turns which means less resistance. It can also be made with a thicker gauge wire for less resistance. So, a large coil can be wound to only add 100-300 or so ohms to the pickup when put in series. That doesn't change the pickup response much if the pickup's normal DC resistance is 6K ohms.

If you use a small coil like the Bzzzzkill, you need more winds so it is going to add more resistance. A capacitor bypass for higher frequencies will help since these systems are made to cancel 50-60 hz electrical hum.

I think the large coil idea is a better solution if you can put the coils somewhere. You can wind one by hand with a board and some nails since they are usually only a few hundred winds if your area is big enough.
 
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HomespunEffects said:
I’m going to give this one a try. I’ll probably put it on a switch to defeat it to see if it makes a difference in tone.
Click to expand...
Sweet! Would love to see your results.

They focus quite a bit on RWRP middle coils in the video and with a special version of the product for that config. Presumably having a RWRP middle pickup as your starting point for this product is preferable and reduces residual buzz even further? I agree with what Joey said in the video about not wanting complete silence when nothing is played. Would be weird and to me once you’ve gone totally quiet I have to believe you must be giving up some tone somewhere.
 
Eagle said:
RWRP
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That never made much sense for me anyway. I mean, it's silencing those positions that I don't often use for gainier sounds anyway. At least I won't. But then, I'm hardly ever using positions 2 and 4 at all. Soft-ish sounds instantly reminding one of Knopfler or Chris Rea (which is ok, just nothing I want my sound to be associated with). Sure, then there's Cory Wong as well (but I often wish he'd rather use the neck pickup on its own instead).
 
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