squeeling pickup

[mattdowney]

i have recently finished my homrmade rhoads guitar.i have 2 kent armstrong high gain pickups(13k) they were fairly inexpensive but great sounding pickups. my neck pickup squeels horribly. if i turn my gain down it goes away a bit. when i jam with my band it is horrible i cant use the neck position or middle position. i can play in these positions but the second i stop playing it squeels. and whats strange is it squeels when i put my hands on the strings? someone said it could be a microphonic pickup but it brand new. any ideas?

thanks matt

[Jehle]

Sounds like microphonic feedback alright. I'd wax pot that pup and that should cure the problem.

[GuitarMaestro]

Sounds like microphonic feedback alright. I'd wax pot that pup and that should cure the problem.

I second that. What happens is that the coils of the pickup resonate, because of the sound comnig out of your amp which results in feedback. That is the reason you cannot stop the sqealing by muting the strings. A wax potting solves this....

[GregP]

Sounds like a slam-dunk for microphonic to me. Just because a pickup is new doesn't mean it won't be microphonic-- something may have gone wrong with the potting procedure, or it may not have gotten potted at all!

Easily done at home for about $2 worth of wax and an hour of your time.

Greg

[mattdowney]

thanks guys. how would i go about wax potting the pickup?

[Devon Headen]

There's a tutorial on the homepage for re-potting pickups.

[scott from _actual time_]

the pickup could very well be microphonic, or it could be vibrating in the mounting [althrough this usually produces more of a wailing, high midrange squeal and not a ringwraith shriek]. some pickups especially with high gain amp settings are right on the edge of feeding back, and normal pickup mountings are not designed to hold the pickup down really tight.

here's the way to know for sure -- get the pickup feeding back and then grab it firmly between your thumb and finger. if it keeps squealing, the windings in the pickup have become microphonic, but if the squealing stops when you grab it, the mounting is the problem. depending on whether your pickups are mounted on mounting rings or direct to the body, there are different things you could try to stiffen up the mounting. i have a Dean Les Paul copy where i had to cram foam blocks into th epickup cavities underneath the pickups to immobilize them enough to stop feedback.