ok, i got an emg 81 and 60 for my guitar. I put em in myself. I cant solder so naturally they sounded like shit. I got some new pots and crap for cheap and just got a guy at a local music store to put em in. All the solder joints are perfect from what i see but i still get the same exact hum, and i know its not my equipment cuz my pos jackson pickups didnt even do this. do i just have messed up pickups, or could the fact that my strings are 6 months old and prolly too loose have anything to do with this. altough i used the tremolo to make the strings tighter and it didnt help much. it also happens alot more the higher up strings go. on the e string 0 is alot worse than a 5 on the b. its a little worse on the 81 than it is on the 60. unless someone knows how to fix this im takin it back and bitchin at the guy.

old strings aren't gonna make it do that.. it's got to be a problem with your pickups/their wiring, unless your amp or chord is messed up.

here's a tip for soldering.. its very easy: be patient. get the iron hot, then hold it down onto the two pieces of metal you're soldering together. NEVER melt the new solder on your iron.. it won't stick good. make the pieces of metal hot enough that the solder melts ON THEM not on the iron! that means they're hot enough to really stick together well. if you do it this way.. well.. i do it that way, and i've never done a bad solder job. my old physics teacher taught me well :P

well yeah i know howto solder, i just suck cuz i never do it. the solderin job the guy did is perfect and i used my monster cable straight from guitar to amp so i dont see how id get hum from that. my friend has an 81 also so we'll just take em offa the quick connect and ill put his in mine and see if it still hums, thatll show whats wrong rather quickly.

did u disconect the bridge earth? its says to get rid of that in the emg installation guide.

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my emg hums viciously when i play at high volumes.. actually, it's not really a hum but rather a low feedback... and for some reason, the PICK UP IT'S SELF is vibrating like a battery operated lover... WTF??? it doesn't have that passive pick up hum so i know it's not the soldering and it only stops when i hold the pickup from vibrating... wtf??? why is this?

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My 81 has a VERY clean output which works well with my 5150, which has a shit load of gain. So i dont think it the 81 making the hum.

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^agreed, maybe theres a bad solder or the battery is dead, maybe just really poor cables or a shitty amp, I wonder.

never had much probs with EMG's. however I don't use them anymore, I kinda prefer passives

Is there any high voltage electronics in the room you are playing in, i.e. computer, tv, ect ect? That would cause a very bad hum especialy with a high gain pickup.

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if that's the prob, then it can probably be fixed with a power conditoner, or something like that, that will eliminate wall noise.

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sounds like feedback. does it sound like mating buffalos? if it doesn't do it at low volume, or it quits when you walk away from your amp, it's probable feedback. the cause would be that your signal is too hot going into the amp, and it's picking up everything around you including your amp. you could try to turn your volume down on the guitar, or the gain stage of your amp, or maybe going back to passive pickups.

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what kind of amp are you using and at what settings? You know that these should change when going from passive to active right? Try plugging your buddy's guitar in, the one with emgs and see if it does the same thing with his guitar. it's not unlike throwing a mild overdrive pedal in between you and your amp when you go active.

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I use an EMG 85/81 combo, and I usually practise in front of my computer, which has a 17" and a 19" monitor running, and the guitar is plugged straight to my Boss GX700 (old rackmount multifx preamp), which is lying about 10cm from the monitors, and then the signal goes into my computers sound card and into my headphones. I don't get any BAD hum, just hum. If i turn the volume on my guitar down to about 70%, all the hum is dropped. So it doesn't have to be hummy just because there's stuff in the room.

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