RGA121 - Pickup hum in positions 2 & 4

[tobin]

My (new to me) RGA121 has a DiMarzio Tone Zone and Air Norton which came with the guitar. I am getting a noticeable hum from the pickups when the switch is in positions 2 and 4.

*I tried to post a link to the ibanez site but my post count is too low*

Is this normal? I am not sure if these pickups were installed correctly. It sounds like the difference between a single coil and a humbucker. Sorry if this has been covered before, but since "hum" is part of "humbucker" the search function returned about 1000 results.

[Fang]

Positions 2 and 4 are the humbuckers in their split positions.

In Position 2, the neck humbucker is wired in parallel, so the coils are acting as two separate single coils like on a stratocaster.

Position 4 coil taps both humbuckers so that only the inner coils of both humbuckers are in use.

There will be a noticeable hum in these positions, especially with an overdriven amp because the pickups are no longer acting as humbuckers, make sense?

These positions are great for clean tones though, or a more "spanky" overdriven tone.

[_FR0D0]

Fang you are wrong when you say that is normal to have hum in that positions, is true that they are not longer in serial (what you mean with your "acting as humbuckers" phrase), but if they are correctly wired the coils will be in parallel hum-canceling mode. So if tobin have a lot of noise in that positions is probable having a bad wiring issue.

[EvoGiant]

i agree. 2 and 4 are supposed to be the hum canceling positions. to get rid of the hum try switching the coil tap output and ground.

[tobin]

Thanks everyone for your input. I am pretty sure the PO installed these himself, so he probably wired it incorrectly. I am swapping these out (purple to black color) so I will have the shop wire them based on the diagram rather than how it is currently wired.

[Fang]

woops, my bad guys.

Didn't mean to misinform you!