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I put a cover on my JB and I believe it sucked the life out of it.. my tone lacks mids and trebles in heavy distortion settings.. jus sounds too mellow now.. I'm an amateur with guitar mods though so maybe I f***ed up the installation... is it my fault or do pickup covers alter the tone?

you might have the cover on wrong. try putting it on the other way (the other pole pieces come through the openings). And no pickup covers should not screw up your tone like that.

also if you changed the wiring you might want to double check that too.

but how could it not alter the tone?.. it's basically putting a piece of metal in a magnetic field.. by all means it should affect the tone.. anyways I had a professional double check the wiring and I have it on right.. I have the adjustable pole pieces just barely popping out of the holes in the pickup cover

just to say, if somebody puts a plastic cover on their pickups and is like quot;MY TONE ROXZ0rZ NOW!!quot; tell them that they're an idiot, and if somebody tells you it changes the tone, slap them for me. Plastic does not in any way affect magnetic fields, tell them that they're an ignoramus and should cease to exist.

maybe that was kinda harsh..

to be even more harsh.. if you would've read the thread you'd see that I put a METAL pickup cover.... in a physics pov.. putting metal in a magnetic field can have plenty of an effect.. I strongly believe that pickup covers alter tone.. anybody disagree?

I have not done a side-by-side comparison, but I've the word on the street says it does- minimally. It should cut the highs a little..not much though.

this has been brought up many times, and had the same results. everyone who had expirience with this and replied on such threads has said it does little to affect tone, and if it were a newer cover (like the ones SD puts on) it has pretty much no effect. do a search to see exactly what people say. if pickup covers had a negative affect, why are they so popluar? the bottom line is, i think theres a different problem with your pickup.

also... this should be in the pickup room.

I've searched high and low.. askjeeves, google, the threads in these forums.. etc... I am using NEW seymour duncan pickup covers installed on a new JB.. I did the installation and wiring right.. and I remember my pickup having much better mids and trebles.. my opinion (along with many others') is that the JB pickup was designed and optimized as an open coil.. some pickups might sound great with covers (IE gibson).. but I'm thinking I'll have to sacrifice aesthetics for tone (and it looks soooo goooood) and take it off the bridge hb.. sucks

In the process of putting on the cover, did you maybe lower the pickup?

I've played with pickup height and pole heights.. in every way the pickup sounds more smooth and mellow.. not bad.. just different

JBs come with covers too. No pickup is quot;optimizedquot; to have an open coil. The cover should have little affect. I agree, it sounds like another problem. If you want more answers search this site.


Originally Posted by rainsong86I've played with pickup height and pole heights.. in every way the pickup sounds more smooth and mellow.. not bad.. just different

I could be the cover. If you don't like it, just take it off.


Originally Posted by rainsong86to be even more harsh.. if you would've read the thread you'd see that I put a METAL pickup cover.... in a physics pov.. putting metal in a magnetic field can have plenty of an effect.. I strongly believe that pickup covers alter tone.. anybody disagree?

I posted this in a similar thread about pickup covers. Here's what's going on:
The non-porous material that SD use for the Covers were specifically selected because it does not affect the tone of the pickup. The original pickup covers that Gibson used in the original PAF in the '50's were made out of pressed sheet metal that made them good conductors. Not good. The Humbucker was first designed to have a metal cover to help shield against external noise. It is connected to the outer shielding of the pickup lead wire via the base plate, which also acts like a shield. This way, the external noise can be trapped by the cover and routed to the ground. This method is highly effective, but there is one drawback: ''stray capacitance'' appears between the cover and the coil. On the structure of the humbucker, although unintended, the cover and the coils are laid out in such a way as to create a capacitor. The resulting unintensional capacitance is called ''stray capacitance'', and it is extremely small in value. In this situation, certain upper frequencies of the signal produced by the strings may leak from the coil to the cover and eventually go to the ground. The cover is acting as a tone filter, making the sound less bright. If we reverse this effect, removal of the cover may make the sound sharper and brighter. This is because the leak is stopped. All the high frequencies which were otherwise thrown out would come back to life. Players were able to gain more clarity by removing the covers. That's why when Eric Clapton and Greg Allman took the covers off from their LP's pickups experienced significant amount of tone improvements. Countless other famous artist did the same thing. Even Page and Beck did the same after seeing Clapton do this.
Nowadays, modern covered humbuckers don't suffer anymore from high end loss because of the quality and type of non-conductor material used on making the covers ( German Nickel ). I, personally prefer covered humbuckers simply because to me, they give my Les Pauls more of the Vintage appeal. Specially now that the covers are made 100 times better than the old ones and does not affect tone anymore.


Originally Posted by Old Ghost

That's why when Eric Clapton and Greg Allman took the covers off from their LP's pickups experienced significant amount of tone improvements. Countless other famous artist did the same thing. Even Page and Beck did the same after seeing Clapton do this.
Nowadays, modern covered humbuckers don't suffer anymore from high end loss because of the quality and type of non-conductor material used on making the covers ( German Nickel ). I, personally prefer covered humbuckers simply because to me, they give my Les Pauls more of the Vintage appeal. Specially now that the covers are made 100 times better than the old ones and does not affect tone anymore.

From what I'm aware of, Clapton sorta started the whole thing in 66 or so,(where he got the idea from???) and he made mention of it in a few magazine articles around that time (when he was in the Bluesbreakers). Also, I believe the covers originally were German Silver and were changed to some different alloy in a cost cutting measure in the early 60's.

As far as changing tone drastically- was the pickup heated up too much when you broke the solder joints?