Anyone tried a JB with an A6?

[Masta' C]

Re: Anyone tried a JB with an A6?

Thank you for the clips. Definitely a big difference. Personally, I like the stock sound, but it's great that the A6 pretty much did what you wanted it to!

[GuitarDoc]

Re: Anyone tried a JB with an A6?

They definitely add a lot of low mids and soften some highs. That's very good info to know.

Hey Ace, thanks for those clips. They tell me a lot and will help me determine where I need to put some A6 mags. I already have a couple ideas.

[WDeeGee]

Re: Anyone tried a JB with an A6?

Okay so, this took longer than expected. First there was more of a delay actually getting the magnets and then I threw my back out and have been bed/sofa-bound, so today is actually the first day I've been able to even carry a guitar from one room to another to change parts out. Since this HB-102 was what started the whole thing, I stuck an A6 in that first. I was able to slacken the strings enough to get the pickup out without restringing, except the high E broke so that is a new string. I don't think that's made any audible difference, though, as the existing strings are only a couple of weeks old and with me in bed they haven't had many hours put into them regardless.

So, I'll get to the other guitars and pickups as and when I can, but for now here is just a handful of real basic clips of the HB-102 in the Schecter, stock A5 vs A6.

https://soundcloud.com/aceflibble/sets/sd-hb-102-stock-vs-a6-magnet/s-53je7

'Raw' is a couple of open chords direct in. No amp, no physical effects, no software effects or simulations. This is the only example which really matters and shows the difference the most.
'Software Dist' is some palm muted power chords, recorded direct in then with an allegedly-Mesa-style scoopy, harsh distortion patch running in GR5. The 'amp' settings are all 7/10 except mids on 5/10.
'Pedal Dist' is power chords running into a Blackstar LT-Dual overdrive+distortion pedal before the interface, with everything set to 7. Then GR5's cabinet simulation as above plus a touch of reverb. No amp simulation.

There's no 'real amp' recording yet because that requires me to move some heavy stuff about, which I can't do in my current state. I'll do that if/when I am able to do the mag swaps in the other pickups, but for the HB-102 this'll have to do. (For pickups examples I prefer just direct-in recordings anyway.) You'll have to forgive my sloppy and inconsistent attempt at playing; with the amount of painkillers I'm on even strumming a power chord the same way twice is a bit of a stretch and I needed a rest after swapping the magnet over, so hey, it's crappy playing, live with it.
Still, the tone change is fairly clear, I reckon. The A6 brings a really solid low-end thump in all conditions. Especially with the two distortion types, it's causing both the wound strings to be more distorted but also the sheer volume of the low-end is bumped up, too; you get a louder sound both going into and coming out of the pedal/amp sim. (I doubt this would be audible with a real valve amp as I would expect any power amp compression to make the difference in volume coming out of the preamp pretty irrelevant.) For the raw input I think the rounding-off of the high-end is the most obvious difference, it's a much warmer sound.

Given that my main problem with many high-wound A5 pickups is that the low-mids are too lacking, they don't actually generate quite as much of a signal as I expect them to, and the high-end is often piercing, I'm pretty happy with this change up. The bass gets a small bump, the low-mids get a big bump, the high-mids don't really get touched, and the treble gets reined in. As someone whose task is mostly to fill in the gap between the bass guitar and the lead guitar, this suits me greatly. (Though I suspect I'll be moving the preamp gain on my actual amp down one notch if I do stick with any A6s; I can see the down-tuned guitars getting muddy with the extra output.)

Of course it might be that the other pickups don't react to the change in the same way, but for now where the mission was to get more whack out of a thin-sounding pickup, it seems A6 is working as hoped for.

Good job. How do you compare this to an A8?
That does about the same thing, lower highs a bit, less low end, a bit more mids?

[Ace Flibble]

Re: Anyone tried a JB with an A6?

Good job. How do you compare this to an A8?
That does about the same thing, lower highs a bit, less low end, a bit more mids?

I've not done an A8 swap in a while; I was deep in the A8 fad a few years back when everybody was using them for everything, but I got tired of them fairly quickly and changed most of them to ceramics. It's been a couple of years since I last used an A8 pickup for more than a few minutes.

But with that in mind, so far I'm feeling this A6 is like an A8 (or at least how I remember most A8 pickups being) running into a 250k volume pot and a tone control turned to 8. It definitely does not have the almost-ceramic 'cut' that A8 has, but the compression feels somewhat similar and the sheer volume of the low-end is more-or-less the same. (Though I think A8 has a tighter style of low-end; this A6 is a little bit on the loose side.)

The way I've found the common magnets and with my taste, I think of ceramic being for rhythm guitar, A5 for lead guitar, and A8 for single-guitar bands where you need to do a bit of both. This A6, so far, feels like a 'single-guitar bands... which never have solos' magnet. It's the A8 for people who don't want to ever 'cut through the mix'.

[Clint 55]

Re: Anyone tried a JB with an A6?

A6 is more like A5. It responds the same with bouncy character but has added soft low mids and the top rounded. It doesn't have biting mids or aggressive character like A8. It's a very useful mag. Not niche at all.