TCI pick ups

[EmiAba]

Hi
I've read about this new PRS pickups and I would like to know more about them. Introduced in 2020, first on Paul's guitar, now it seems a variety of models have them him, in particular 85/15 (regular and S series) loaded guitar. The acronym means "tuned capacitance and inductance" and the purpose is to match frequency between guitars and pick ups. But my question is how does it work? Adding capacitors in the circuit? I was not able to find any good answer on the internet. Anyone can share knowledge on this matter?

[jmh151]

Someone on YouTube opened up a TCI tuned PRS and didn't find anything special with the wiring. I believe it's just a method of getting better consistency of pickups during production that most of us won't know the difference of, but it would show up on a computer analysis

[Masta' C]

As I understand it, they have simply adjusted circuit values slightly to suit specific models. It's not that every guitar is "custom tuned" or anything like that...more that Custom 24's get one set of values, Singlecuts get another, etc.

I have a newer set of 85/15 USA pickups and they say "85/15 TCI" on the label, but I couldn't tell you if they differ from the regular (non-TCI) versions in any significant way.

More likely, they measure individual parts like resistors and pots and, depending where the tolerances fall, those parts get assigned to one model vs another (example: a standard 500K pot may measure "450K" or it may measure "550K"...quite a difference!)

[BluesMan335]

Matching up pickups & guitar? Not sure that could be done, as pickups can sound very different from one guitar to the next, even within the same model, as forum members have pointed out over the years. No two pieces of wood are the same due to differences in grain, density, water content, mineral content, etc. That impacts their tone, frequency response, and sustain. Can those qualities be measured and pickups be adjusted for? Seems unlikely. What would they measure & tweak for?

As far as pot values, the vast majority in guitars have a 10 to 20% mfg. tolerance limit. How many players know what the pot values are in their guitars that they especially like the sound of? Very few have multimeters. Odds are their '500K' pots aren't actually 500K, and are either brighter or warmer than the mystical 500K. If they had pots that are truly 500K, they might not like them as well.

"Tuned capacitance and inductance" may be more of marketing slogan than anything a player can discern.