diff --git a/pyfpdb/fpdb_db.py b/pyfpdb/fpdb_db.py
index 6d07febe..edd12b3b 100644
--- a/pyfpdb/fpdb_db.py
+++ b/pyfpdb/fpdb_db.py
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ class fpdb_db:
         if backend==fpdb_db.MYSQL_INNODB:
             import MySQLdb
             try:
-                self.db = MySQLdb.connect(host = host, user = user, passwd = password, db = database, use_unicode=True, charset="utf8")
+                self.db = MySQLdb.connect(host = host, user = user, passwd = password, db = database, use_unicode=True)
             except:
                 raise fpdb_simple.FpdbError("MySQL connection failed")
         elif backend==fpdb_db.PGSQL: