software

This is one I've been thinking about for a while since there's a group of us in here looking for medium output bucker solutions:

Anybody ever taken a Distortion neck (12.7k) and used it as a bridge pu? More particularly, with an Alnico 5 or other Alnico?

I did once. I was trying to make a Cyclone-clone using parts on hand. I used a Distortion neck, in the bridge, mated with a Cool Rails bridge, in the neck. The numbers looked good. It should've worked. - It didn't.
(This was in my Patriot.)

Both pickups sounded awful in those positions. Interestingly, both of those pups, in the rightful position, are two of my favorites. It's just one example, but it didn't work for me.

Aren't neck versions specifically wound brighter than their bridge counterparts?? If so then it would be brighter than the bridge distortion which is plenty bright enough to my ears anyway....I guess I can't see that working to well.


Originally Posted by ranalliAren't neck versions specifically wound brighter than their bridge counterparts?? If so then it would be brighter than the bridge distortion which is plenty bright enough to my ears anyway....I guess I can't see that working to well.

The extra brightness is due at least in part to the ceramic magnet, so it can be tamed to a large extent by swapping out the ceramic for an Alnico 5/4/3/2, which is what I mentioned in my original post. As to whether the mag swap would tame the brightness enough, I don't know.

The brightness of any neck model relative to the bridge model is mostly due to having fewer turns of wire, resulting in lower DC resistance. A Distortion neck at 12.7k (with Alnico mag) wouldn't be as bright as, say, a 59 neck. Check the Tone Chart and you will see that even with the stock ceramic mag, the Distortion neck's resonant peak (6.5kHz) is still lower than that of the 59 neck (6.8kHz). The Distortion neck's resonant peak should be lowered even further by putting in an Alnico mag, especially anything below A5.

Of course, this is just desktop theorizing based on the available numbers and there's nothing like firsthand experience, which is why I made this thread. I could try it and then end up saying, yeah this was a lousy idea because the nature of the wind of this pickup may still be so geared to brightness that even the mellowest Alnico won't balance it out enough.

So in other words you're suggesting the creation of the JB neck model.

Not really. I'd be looking for more low-mid warmth than the JB, which going by the Tone Chart doesn't appear to have as much midrange as the Distortion.

The JB and Distortion are the same pickup in reality, they just have different magnets, the gauge of wire, number of windings, and pole type are exactly the same.

Zhangliqun,

If SD decide to start makin medium output pups I'd be the first in line. I kind of wished I went on and wound a 10-12K A2 on UGD. Anyway in the next few weeks I'll be switching out my A5 mag in my JB/C5 hybrid and I'll be reporting the differences in the:

Large Ceramic
A5
A2

What I hope will make it interesting is the fact it's a hybrid pup, I'm hopeful the A2 mag will sound very smooth and split the midspike between the high, and low mids; however an A4 might be better for splitting the midspike....we'll see either way.

A CC neck version seems to be what the DD(n) would be if you had the low mids spike you get with the A2 mag.

Luke

I'd say go with the Alnico 4 -- it has the best combo of warmth, smoothness and output of the non-5's.

I read about the hybrid idea in here a few months ago and I had a guy from LP Forum who lives in Canada wind me a special quot;X-pickupquot; based on the hybrid concept, particularly the Custom 59 hybrid.

There is less disparity on the coil mismatch in terms of DC resistance (6.7k screw/4.5k slug) vs. the Custom/59 (7k screw/4k slug).

The KICKER...(drum rollllll)...is that I had him tap the 6.7 screw coil at 5.0k. So now not only do I have a humbucker that will sound good split (6.7k), I can also have a full-on humbucker at either 9.5k or 11.2k.

I haven't plugged it into the LP Std yet but I did get to check it out with the mmeter and the specs are a bullseye. If I like his pickup I will put an extensive review in here and give you contact info for those interested. (P.S. Odd designs are not his specialty necessarily -- his previous work has been pretty much straight ahead vintage buckers but he has gotten a lot of good reviews.)


Originally Posted by ZhangliqunI'd say go with the Alnico 4 -- it has the best combo of warmth, smoothness and output of the non-5's.

I read about the hybrid idea in here a few months ago and I had a guy from LP Forum who lives in Canada wind me a special quot;X-pickupquot; based on the hybrid concept, particularly the Custom 59 hybrid.

There is less disparity on the coil mismatch in terms of DC resistance (6.7k screw/4.5k slug) vs. the Custom/59 (7k screw/4k slug).

The KICKER...(drum rollllll)...is that I had him tap the 6.7 screw coil at 5.0k. So now not only do I have a humbucker that will sound good split (6.7k), I can also have a full-on humbucker at either 9.5k or 11.2k.

I haven't plugged it into the LP Std yet but I did get to check it out with the mmeter and the specs are a bullseye. If I like his pickup I will put an extensive review in here and give you contact info for those interested. (P.S. Odd designs are not his specialty necessarily -- his previous work has been pretty much straight ahead vintage buckers but he has gotten a lot of good reviews.)

Definitely keep us updated!


Originally Posted by Luke DukeDefinitely keep us updated!

(Be careful what you wish for...)

Here is the review of said quot;X-pickupquot; and it is a HUGE success. There is a lot to talk about and I will try to keep it as brief as possible, but this is likely still going to be a LONG POST.

I now understand the reason for the good reviews this guy has gotten. His pickups make all the bridge position Duncans and Gibsons and others I've ever tried sound just so tonally lop-sided, hollow, peaky-notchy, however you want to say it. (It has this but it lacks that; this other one has that but lacks this and the other thing, etc., the kind of stuff that made us try the hybrid idea to begin with.) This guy has found a wind that fills in the scoops and flattens the spikes and makes the pickup sound.....well, COMPLETE is the only word that fits.

The way I now have this pickup tweaked, it sounds like my dream overwound PAF sounds in my head -- the ideal combination of beef, honk, bark, shimmer and sparkle all in one. It's very dynamically responsive and extremely articulate, especially on the attack. Instead of homogenizing the subtleties and variations of your individual picking technique as most pickups do to one degree or another, this pickup seems to magnify them and invites you to explore different picking techniques and touches. The articulation of notes on all three wound strings, especially the low E, is startling.

All of this is twice as true on when playing clean. This pickup doesn't have the fast, jangly decay most bridge pickups have on clean settings. Even though it is so dynamically responsive, there is a slightly compressed quality that makes the notes bloom on even the most squeaky-clean amp settings. I play my blues pure clean to only the slightest break-up, so this is a very desirable quality. It also helps when you want to do swirly, futuristic keyboard-like volume swells as I like to do.

My Les Paul now sounds the way I've always thought a Les Paul should sound -- authoritative but clear, with tone and sustain for days.

NOW FOR THE TECH/TINKER TALK:

The whole purpose of this pickup was experimental, to find out:

a) If high-low hybrids (vintage coil high output coil) are what they've been cracked up to be in here, and

b) If it's worth the trouble to tap a humbucker coil.

c) If you can have a bridge humbucker with extreme versatility, rather than just jack-of-all-trades mediocrity.

Answer yes on all counts. If you recall the specs from the previous post, I had it set up with a 6.5k screw coil, 4.5k slug, with a tap on the screw coil at 5k. I wanted this tap so I could use a switch to choose between 9.5k and 11k. He and I settled on an Alnico 3 magnet, but I wasn't concerned about the magnet so much since I have plenty of all four Alnico types on hand to experiment with.

The 9.5k setting was a wonderful overwound PAF sound. If you're looking for that and nothing else, I recommend ordering one with a 5k screw coil and a 4.5k slug coil straight up -- you won't need any of the extra bells and whistles I have on mine.

The 11.2k setting (the extra 1.5k on the screw coil was about 0.2k over spec at 1.7k) gives you a wonderful wide, barking tone but was there was a loss of some (not much) of the articulation found on the 9.5 setting -- but that's to be expected when you're running much up above 10k.

The single coil (6.7k) setting was surprisingly Strat-like (I A/B'd it with my Strat on bridge pickup and it was really close) but still a hair on the thin side. However Strats actually do sound that way when you plug one in after playing an LP for a while, so I wanted it a little thicker so it would sound at home on my LP.

See PART 2: SOLUTIONS, next...

THE SOLUTIONS:

I finally decided to wire it up for Spin-A-Split so I could have it all. I didn't want to give up the tone pot because I like to roll off some of that edge, but there was no choice. The edge became a problem because there was no longer a cap in this pickup's circuit, which guitar hotrodding veterans know rolls off just a touch of treble even when the tone pot is on 10.

The absence of this cap pickup added a touch of a slicing, shrill quality to the treble, which needless to say I didn't like. Okay, no tone dial means no cap -- so how do I fix this? It then hit me that if just a tiny amount of treble was constantly being lost anyway with a tone pot, maybe soldering a very low value cap from the pickup lead lug of the volume pot to ground would do the trick. It was just a matter of zeroing in on what exactly that value would be.

I then remembered that I had a couple of 470pf (.00047uf -- less than half a .001uf) caps from Radio Shack laying in the parts box that I bought by mistake thinking they were .047uf or something, I forget. Anyway, at the very least it was a reminder to keep all electronic parts (and parts in general) you think you'll never need because sooner or later an idea will pop up.

I was thinking that I'd probably have to try several caps of different values before I found the ideal value but I soldered one of those 470pf's in and...
BINGO!

Ladies and gentlemen this is your solution to overly bright/shrill sounding guitars, the simplest treble tamer idea ever. That said, 470pf might not be the right value for your guitar, but caps are cheap and you can experiment with different values.

Anyway, this combined with the Spin-A-Split gives me the perfect LP bridge pu tone. I can now dial in the exact amount of beef or Stratty-ness I want, from 6.7 to 11.2k. Another very cool discovery was reading the resistance of the pickup in the circuit while turning the Spin-A-Split pot. It gives you resistance readings all up and down that spectrum. I took measurements from 1 to 10 -- and keeping in mind that, at least with my multi-meter, the readings in the guitar circuit are anywhere from 0.2k to 0.5k lower than when the pickup is just sitting there like a turd all by itself on your desk -- here are the results:

0 = 6.48k (screw coil only)
1 = 6.52k
2 = 8.03k
3 = 8.71k
4 = 9.63k
5 = 10.05k
10 = 10.65k (full humbucker)

As you can see, these measurements also tell you quite a bit about the taper of the pot. Almost nothing happens going from 0 to 1, but there's a big jump from 1 to 2, so I took measurements in between:

1.25 = 7.04k
1.5 = 7.56k

And at the other end from 5 to 10, not much happens. The ideal humbucker tone to me seems to be between 5 and 6, rolled back to between 4 and 5 for a little bit more brightness for a better BB King/Jimmy Page middle position twang. The ideal quot;single coilquot; tone seems to be at 2 to 2.5.

Naturally all that will take a little getting used to, but as I said before, to me this Les Paul now sounds like a Les Paul SHOULD -- the holy grail of my fantasy PAF tone. An authoritive, wide, but very clear tone.

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR CONTACT INFO

Now I will field any questions...

Oh, one last thing I forgot. I switched the Alnico 3 to an Alnico 4 and that added a touch of rock-n-roll quot;hardnessquot; to make the bark and honk more solid and thus complete the package.

Also, needless to say, screw the Distortion neck pickup idea...

Shameless Bump...

P.S. CONTACT INFO: You can e-mail Jon at rhonjon@sympatico.ca (he's in Canada)

As for price, since mine was experimental he charged me only his cost plus shipping. You can negotiate with Jon on price but he is pretty reasonable.

Awesome! That's the only thing I know to say. I want a road test and some sound clips man. The tapped split bucker idea is great, isn't that what some of the Bardens did?

Luke

My question is what kind of rig are you playing thru? A combo or stack? And how many watts?

I ask because after going thru a 500t, a Distortion, a '59 and finally a Demon I just can't find a pup for my rig that sounds good full on or split. Its been one or the other in my trials.

The 59 and demon sound great full on but not so good split and vice versa with the Distortion and 500t.

I wonder what an Invader neck would sound like in the bridge?

You've done some d*mn interesting research, bud. Seriously.


Originally Posted by Luke DukeAwesome! That's the only thing I know to say. I want a road test and some sound clips man.

I wish I could but I don't have the recording or computer gear to get you soundclips BUT...the next gig I get for guitar (these days mostly playing bass), I'll be sure to give you a rundown of how it sounds from my perspective in the heat of real live musical combat, and what other guitar geeks in the audience thought.

Beyond that, you're just gonna have to bite the bullet and try this guy out. Trust me, you will NOT be sorry. You can read reviews on his stuff from other customers on Harmony Central (I know, not exactly a hotbed of savvy, veteran guitar-slingers) and I will post the link as soon as Jon sends it back to me (I lost it D'OH!!!)Originally Posted by Luke DukeThe tapped split bucker idea is great, isn't that what some of the Bardens did?

I have to confess that I don't know jack about Bardens. For all I knew, I was the only guy to ever have a humbucker coil tapped (not just split).

***

BY THE WAY - DISCLAIMER...I am not Jon plugging my own pickups. GOD, I wish I was, though, because I'd be salivating on the verge of a small fortune -- his stuff is that good. I'm SOOOO jealous...


Originally Posted by DirtykingMy question is what kind of rig are you playing thru? A combo or stack? And how many watts?

Fair question, and I'm surprised no-one asked so far. One important note is that I have Les Paul Std that sounds unusually wonderful even by LP standards (so to speak). It is the equal of any Historic. Even so, I'm convinced Jon's pickups will greatly improve the sound of any guitar that is not overly dark or bottom-heavy tonewise.

Depending on the gig, it's either two Fender Hotrod combos (Deluxe 1x12 40 watts - DeVille 2x12 60 watts) in stereo or just straight into one Fender Hotrod, most of the time the latter.

I know what you're thinking, and you're right -- the Hotrods have a worthless, godawful overdrive tone. But the Hotrods (and tube Fenders in general) have a killer clean tone, and I get my overdrive tone from a Maxon Overdrive Pro, basically internally a clone of the Ibanez Tube Screamer, and it sounds great, though it could use just a little more soak.

I play clean more often than clipped but I know both when I hear it and in my experience, at least for the sound I want, if you find a pickup that sounds great clean, it will sound great crunched.Originally Posted by DirtykingI ask because after going thru a 500t, a Distortion, a '59 and finally a Demon I just can't find a pup for my rig that sounds good full on or split. Its been one or the other in my trials.

The 59 and demon sound great full on but not so good split and vice versa with the Distortion and 500t.

I have tried out the 500T, but not the Distortion, though I think it would be similar, maybe a little more mid with the higher DC resistance. I can see why both would sound better on single coil settings because since they are high output 'buckers, they give you a high output single coil when split ( /-7.4k for the 500T and /-8.3k for the Distortion). The 59 and Demon give you single coils that are far, FAR too weak to sound worth a crap (4k and 5k respectively). Strat and Tele single coil pickups' DC resistance is 6k minimum, usually 6.5 or above, and sometimes 8 or more.

(But then again, this is why God -- via Seymour -- invented Spin-A-Split. You can get the quot;single coilquot; sound of your dreams by adding just enough of the other coil to get the right combo of chime and warmth. And it will work even with a 59 or Demon.)

If you have all these pickups still laying around, you can do a high-low hybrid experiment of your own -- mate a coil from the 59 or Demon (4-5k) with a coil from the Distortion or 500T (7.4-8.3k). This will give you mid-output pickup from 11.4k to 13.3k. I recommend that you use the Distortion or 500T for your screw coil and one of the mellower pickups (59/Demon) for the slug coil.

I also recommend an Alnico 5 magnet and not a ceramic because ceramics are a little shrill, at least to my ear. But take that with a grain of salt and try all kinds of magnets -- you may find that you like the ceramics better and screw what Zhang said.

If you find that gets you closer to the sound you want but doesn't quite cut it, DO get in contact with my man at the previously posted e-mail address.

PART 2:Originally Posted by DirtykingI wonder what an Invader neck would sound like in the bridge?

It would probably sound surprisingly vintage. It is only 7.2k after all, and you may find that at that level, the ceramics are just too bright and an Alnico 5 would be better in that position.

Keep in mind also that Invader necks have a little capacitor wired from the hot lead to ground inside the little thicket of coil lead wires tucked between the coils. If it sounds too dull for your tastes, yank that capacitor.

On the opposite end of that spectrum, this is the same principle behind the 470pf cap I wired from the hot lead of this new pickup to ground, to roll off a touch of excess treble created by the lack of a tone pot on this pickup. Seymour apparently thought the neck Invader sounded a little too bright straight, so he put that cap in there to take some of the edge off. Just be aware that this cap is there and that you can remove it if you think the neck Invader is too dull sounding -- or replace it with one of a different value depending on what you think it (or any pickup) needs.