How a blade affect sound

[Falloffthebonetone]

Re: How a blade affect sound

I just got a CS pickup that MJ made me. It's in the Dimebucker form factor but I wanted it to be basically a JB with a little bit of a Screamin' Demon flavour to it. She nailed it, obviously. But to get that sound, and to balance with the Cool Rails at the neck, I actually find that I've got it sitting quite far from the strings. Given that it's about a 15k pickup, you wouldn't expect to have it that low - so I suspect that maybe the blade is increasing the overall volume.

... I hate you, you stole my idea.

[uOpt]

Re: How a blade affect sound

They sound more hi-fi, more transparent.

The regular polepieces lose contact with the string, they actually "lower the volume" (pick up at less voltage) the very outward swing of the string's vibration. Just the fact that it is uneven makes it less transparent, more complex.

I really am a fan of the normal PAF polepieces (slugs and screws) with a bar magnet on the bottom. They mellow things out without becoming inattentive, make it more "compact" for distortion, it is interesting, there's something extra going on. That reminds me to ditch my Full Shred...

I do like hot rails, though.

[HTT]

Re: How a blade affect sound

Here's an experiment I conducted using a Seymour Duncan Alnico Pro II in the bridge position.
To simulate a blade I used a metal rod across the top of the pole pieces - actually a nail filed flat on one side to stay in position on the pole pieces. I plucked the G string and recorded it three ways. No blade , blade on the neck-side coil, blade on the bridge side coil.

As you can see from the graphs, a blade in either position lowers the lows slightly, boosts the mids, and at 1000hz there is a steeper drop off, with a "plateau" following. I would expect these effects to be more pronounced with a real blade.

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Looking at the graphs, it looks like the lows are higher in output with the blades in either position. The blade configurations look like they drop the output from about 800 Hz to about 1500 Hz. Am I reading the graphs wrong?

[Myaccount876]

Re: How a blade affect sound

Blade pickups like the Tony Iommi/El Diablo also keep you from putting an A8 in there.