What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

[Chris of Arabia]

What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

-a set based on Antiquities but underwound a touch and with a tapped bridge to give both a strong bridge only and a quacky bridge + middle.

I'd happily buy into this. Do it Five-Two style doubly so

[frankfalbo]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

I think the G&L pickups are a rod magnet design, whereas we would clearly have to aim for bar magnet and passive polepieces (to make the p90 wanters happy). So the comparability is questionable at this point.

The G&L's have a base magnet that is not oriented like the 2 magnets in P90's. It's just a single base magnet with the polarity oriented "up".

MJ has made plenty of Z-Coil replacement pickups out of Alnico Strat rods. I have a G&L Comanche and am pretty well versed in those pickups. A split Alnico pole "Z-style in a humbucker mount" would be a great pickup. If you wanted to make it sound a little more P90-ish you could have one center magnet spanning the entire width and two flanking magnets each covering 3 strings. You wouldn't want the flanking magnets to span the entire length because with no return path the magnets would fight one another and it would be total flux chaos.

[Diminished Triad]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

I'd happily buy into this. Do it Five-Two style doubly so

Agree!

[Falloffthebonetone]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

Noiseless is a tough one.

Maybe we can satisfy a part of those who want a P90 sound in a humbucker format with hum-canceling with the other idea, the P-bass style split pickup in a humbucker casing.

It would be noiseless and it has a single pickup point per string. It would have passive polepieces and presumably multiple magnets.

Exactly, the narrower field of a single coil but humcancelling in the same way a p style pickup does. If that can fit in a HB rout with some p90 mojo it would be golden in my book. Hell I'd rout out my strat bridge position to put it in. Also I really think using those fat polepieces will help with that kind of tone, especially if we used a more moderate or low output wind like you said. And mixing magnets could be awesome too like if we did the bass side A5 and the treble side A2 or vice versa. Trying not to get too carried away though.

[King IzzO)))]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

OK, I might be on board this Z-90 thing.

[GilmourD]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

OK, I might be on board this Z-90 thing.

I'm with you on that.

Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk

[jimijames]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

Well, we did a series of bridge pickups (IIRC) which were all good (so I hear, never played any of them), then the strabro 90 which IMO is the best strat pickup I've ever played (including antiquity II surfers) and the best p-90 I've played rolled into one package.

We've covered the bridge humbucker pretty well, which is why I'm predisposed to doing a neck humbucker. The only problem with that is that the neck isn't really a glamorous position. Most people use neck humbuckers for (a) "woman tone" leads, (b) thick and fuzzy chord work, (c) if it's an archtop, jazz stuff

There aren't really any neck pickups you can rock out on. But, that's what the bridge pickup is for.

I can't really think of what I would want from a neck humbucker, that I can't get from either the Seth or the 59/Jazz, or the P-rails. Really, they've covered just about every base there.

Maybe like an ultra-clear active pickup that uses A2? I know les paul preferred active pickups and he got a pretty stellar clean sound. Maybe something like an active version of the seth lover? Or something that could do the eric clapton lace sensor thing, in the same package as an active humbucker? I'm not sure how active pickups work so that might not be feasible. If not that, then maybe something like a piano-bucker that gets as close to the rich clarity you get from a piano as possible?

It sounds like this Z-90 thing is much more popular however.

[Gibson 1964]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

I Think I would be in for that if there was sufficient p90 influence.

Noiseless, p90 sort of tonality would be awesome.

[speed2dirt]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

The Fuglybucker was originally aimed at the neck position. The forum came up with a neck tone they wanted and said design a bridge pickup that would go well with it. MJ came up with a bridge pickup she thought would pair well with the tonal goal the forum wanted and then designed a neck bucker.

[speed2dirt]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

What I want and think would be really different is a firebird/mini-humbucker hybrid pickup that fits into a full-size humbucker cover. It would offer the chime of a singlecoil but the humcancelling properties of a humbucker while adding it's own unique flavor. Like you said, we've already done several humbuckers, a singlecoil, a P90, and a staple pickup. Why not do a mini-humbucker/firebird that fits a full-size space?! I think it'd really hit the nail on the head as far as neck tones go!

[King IzzO)))]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

The Fuglybucker was originally aimed at the neck position. The forum came up with a neck tone they wanted and said design a bridge pickup that would go well with it. MJ came up with a bridge pickup she thought would pair well with the tonal goal the forum wanted and then designed a neck bucker.

It ended up as a neck pickup that would look stupid with a normal bridge pickup. If I were still using a SHTI-1 I'd probably have one, but I'm not.

I've never liked the minis myself, so meh.

[Richard Irons]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

Strat, Strat, Strat!!!
I'd love to see:

-a set based on late 60's style with optimized outputs
-a set based on Antiquities but underwound a touch and with a tapped bridge to give both a strong bridge only and a quacky bridge + middle.

Can't help you on that second request, but there's already a set from the custom shop that matches your first description - the Psychedelic Strat set.

What's more, MJ very recently made me a set with the same tone, but in Stack Plus construction. This was quite expensive to do, because engineering had to be involved in order to compensate the bottom coil. I only got neck and middle pickups because I use the STK-S6 in the bridge and I think that's already perfect. If you're interested in those pickups, they'd probably be reasonably affordable (as far as CS Stacks go) this time round, because the engineering has already been done. The pickup # on the boxes for those two pickups is 205982.

[Myaccount876]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

I would also be on board with another P-90 styled pickup in a humbucker casing. It'd be cool if they could come up with a way for hum-cancelling, but it is definitely not a deal-breaker.

[uOpt]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

The G&L's have a base magnet that is not oriented like the 2 magnets in P90's. It's just a single base magnet with the polarity oriented "up".

MJ has made plenty of Z-Coil replacement pickups out of Alnico Strat rods. I have a G&L Comanche and am pretty well versed in those pickups. A split Alnico pole "Z-style in a humbucker mount" would be a great pickup. If you wanted to make it sound a little more P90-ish you could have one center magnet spanning the entire width and two flanking magnets each covering 3 strings. You wouldn't want the flanking magnets to span the entire length because with no return path the magnets would fight one another and it would be total flux chaos.

That is good info and good suggestions.

So in your opinion this would be bar magnet(s), not rod magnets? That would be more likely to make P90 people happy.

So the trick is side magnets that are both half length and half width? Or are they upright?

[frankfalbo]

Re: What kind of forum special pickup could and would you take?

I think the best fake single coil sounds from the Z format have been rod magnets. There's the ones MJ has done, and PRS had a Fralin design on a CE bolt neck that were great too.

But you're right, if the attempt was to make something with a P90 flavor it would be base magnets and poles. If it were me? I'd do 3 screw poles and half a keeper bar on the bass side, and 3 slugs on the treble side. Each of them shortie bobbins. That way you'd have meatier treble strings, and a little more twang on the bass strings. And guess what you could do? Flip it around if you wanted the reverse.

Due to dimensional limitations of Alnico, you'd probably be stuck with ceramic. But with a small enough ceramic, one that matched the gauss strength of an Alnico center magnet, you could create a stable magnetic circuit with Alnico down the middle and small ceramic flanking magnets. Wheee-YOW!!