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i play duncan surfers SSS in my strat and love the tone, but i have to ask-what makes underwound pickups so toneful?

they let the amp play a bigger role in your tone. in my experience u can have a guitar with crappy low output pickups but with a great amp the rig can sound decent. ill let someone else comment who has more experience than i

I don't know about underwound pickups, but the more signal you hit the front of an amp with, the more compressed the signal gets. This kills some of the definition of your tone and also some dynamics. I guess if you play heavy rock or metal that's not sure a big deal, but I go for classic rock and blues tones and I hate high output pickups. Lower output pickups give me a much more open, natural sound.


Originally Posted by twoheadedboyI don't know about underwound pickups, but the more signal you hit the front of an amp with, the more compressed the signal gets. This kills some of the definition of your tone and also some dynamics. I guess if you play heavy rock or metal that's not sure a big deal, but I go for classic rock and blues tones and I hate high output pickups. Lower output pickups give me a much more open, natural sound.

1

I will also add that high output pickups rarely have a clean tone that can match that of a PAF-style pickup. I look at it this way: compression and gain can easily be added with amps and effects, but if you're using high output pickups, you can't take those characteristics away from the pickup to give it the tone of a PAF. I think medium output pickups like the Demon and Blues Trembucker are often a good compromise, they offer a bit more output, while still retaining much of the PAF vibe.

Ryan


Originally Posted by Quencho092i play duncan surfers SSS in my strat and love the tone, but i have to ask-what makes underwound pickups so toneful?

Surfers are 6.3k dc resistance, which puts them right in the middle for vintage output strat pickups (Quarterpounders need not apply! )

As other posts here mentioned, OVER-winding pickups can strangle the sound, as the signal must pass through all of that wire.

With the high gain amps available today, we don't really need to rely on the pickups for the distortion...

What I notice about higher output single coils is that I lose treble and lose the open quality to the mids that makes an electric guitar sound a little more natural and more like an acoustic instrument, especially when I play rythym.

What happens when you compare two pickups with identical bobbins, identical gauge wire and identical alnico polepieces and wind one to 6K and one to 7K is the 7K one will have more bass and more mids and less treble: a stuffier, less acoustic and less airy tonality.

With a weaker pickup you might have to work a little harder and dig in a little more so that you're shaping the tone more with your hands, but the result ( if you have the chops ) is that more of your own unique soul and personality will come through.

Lew

1 - lew is dead on with that. Originally Posted by LewguitarWhat I notice about higher output single coils is that I lose treble and lose the open quality to the mids that makes an electric guitar sound a little more natural and more like an acoustic instrument, especially when I play rythym.

What happens when you compare two pickups with identical bobbins, identical gauge wire and identical alnico polepieces and wind one to 6K and one to 7K is the 7K one will have more bass and more mids and less treble: a stuffier, less acoustic and less airy tonality.

With a weaker pickup you might have to work a little harder and dig in a little more so that you're shaping the tone more with your hands, but the result ( if you have the chops ) is that more of your own unique soul and personality will come through.

Lew

Originally Posted by LewguitarWhat I notice about higher output single coils is that I lose treble and lose the open quality to the mids that makes an electric guitar sound a little more natural and more like an acoustic instrument, especially when I play rythym.

What happens when you compare two pickups with identical bobbins, identical gauge wire and identical alnico polepieces and wind one to 6K and one to 7K is the 7K one will have more bass and more mids and less treble: a stuffier, less acoustic and less airy tonality.

With a weaker pickup you might have to work a little harder and dig in a little more so that you're shaping the tone more with your hands, but the result ( if you have the chops ) is that more of your own unique soul and personality will come through.

Lew

Thanks Lew. Wow, you make me think and want to play/practice hard!

Two words .... Dynamics and Versitility ..... you can just do more quot;stuffquot; with the lower output pickups IMHO. 1 for what Lew said as well ...

High output (or overwound) pups have a higher inductance. This results in a larger output amplitude, but it also means that the high frequencies will roll off sooner, particularly if the pup is working into a lower impedance volume/tone circuit (like 250K). The high inductance also tends to make the resonant peaks more prominent, which can thin out the sound.

Low inductance pups don't suffer from high frequency rolloff and peaking as much. Since their overall output is lower, you simply compensate by adding more gain at the amp (i.e. turn it up!) I prefer low inductance (underwound) pups because they seems to be more full and solid sounding. (woody?)

On a related topic- humbuckers are traditionally connected so the two windings are in series. This results in a high inductance, and thus the issues I mentioned above apply. I prefer to wire my humbuckers in parallel, which makes the inductance much lower. I always get my humbuckers in the 4-wire version to facilitate this wiring. To my ears, the sound is much quot;chunkierquot; and fuller. The JB in my Strat bridge really benefited from parallel wiring.

I can't add much to whats been said, except to say that putting the new SSL-6 and SSL-1 in my Strat-clone allows me to compare these two conditions at the flip of a switch. The SSL-1 has the classic Strat chimey open sound, that you lose when you switch to the SSL-6.

But, the SSL-6 still has its place in the tone palette, and the quot;notchquot; tone of the 1 amp; 6 together is very full and nice. Still, the 6 as a tapped version would be more versatile.

I, too, love low output pickups (both hb's and single coils) with the right amp.

B


Originally Posted by dr.barloI, too, love low output pickups (both hb's and single coils) with the right amp.

B

According to Cesar Diaz, so did SRV: he says the pickups in SRV's Strat were around 6K and any hotter started sounding muddy and pushed his amps to hard to get the clean tone SRV loved, what with his huge strings, E flat tuning and strong attack.

I have a set of Fralin True Vintage pickups in one of my Strats (like Lindy's Vintage Hots but underwound another 3%) and the neck and middle pickups are just under 6K. The tone is quot;prettierquot;, less aggressive and more bell like than my Antiquity Surfer Strat pickups, though I love the Surfers in my other three Fenders just as much.

FWIW, this may explain why, when looking at the Fender Custom Shop's strat pickups, the neck and middle are wound 5.6k to 5.9K. Now, I have a better understand why they would have pickups with such low outputs.

Thanks, for another very educational thread.

According to Seymour, Strat pickups from the 50's are wound weaker than those from the early 60's. Pickups from the 50's are often 6K or less whereas pickups from the early 60's are 6K or a little more. I've owned two Strats from the 50's: one '54 and one '57 and several from the early 60's. My brother's '62 and my own '63 always sounded quot;fullerquot; to me but I never knew why...I always assumed it was the rosewood fretboard. Turns out the pickups were wound a little stronger in '62 and '63. Lew

Lew

I like to start with a nice clean tone and work from that. Some players prefer to use their volume controls for controling gain. I could never do that. I prefer to hit the amp with a tube screamer or a boost pedal to do that. High output pickups don't get a nice clean tone. At least not in my experience.

Low output pickups are for wimps ... j/k
Very interesting stuff on here ...


Originally Posted by TwilightOdysseyLow output pickups are for wimps ... j/k
Very interesting stuff on here ...

1 on both counts

Not to get too far off topic, but what would the best pickup to ease myself into lower output stuff, considering I'm a Distortion, Invader, EMG 81, Dimebucker, etc... user. I'm considering giving the Demon another try.

Demon!!


Originally Posted by TwilightOdysseyLow output pickups are for wimps ... j/k
Very interesting stuff on here ...
Wimps like SRV?