Ted Greene's pickup setup

[magillver]

Hi there! I was recently reading about the well-known jazz guitarist, Ted Greene, and about his passion for chasing guitar tone. One point that I saw, was that he would drop his neck pickup height (DiMarzio Dual Tone) way down, below the level of the pickguard, then raise the adjustment screws way up (I'm assuming he replaced the stock screws with longer ones). I've done this on my strat, with a Little '59 in the neck position, and I love the tone! I didn't get as dramatic with my adjustments as he did, more like 3~4 full turns down on the pickup, and, accordingly, 3~4 turns up on the screws. My question is, does anyone know how this is effecting the magnetic field/response of the pickup?

[ArtieToo]

I can't answer your question, but I have downloaded a bunch of his lesson's/clips. Love that guy. Someone will be along shortly.

[ICTGoober]

One of my jazz clients does the same thing. He claims it focuses the sound, enabling him to get better string definition and clarity. He's also done experiments such as putting a steel plate over one set of polepieces to change the eddy currents of the magnetic field. He thinks it gives him a single coil sound from his humbucker.

[magillver]

I don't know if it would be a single-coil sound, but it would definitely alter the magnetic field. I'll try it, just for ****s-n-giggles, as I'm starting to get a bit experimental with pickups and tone. I have 3 cheap partscasters with very different configurations, that I have no worries about noodling with, so it's a lot of no-harm-no-foul experimentation...

[beaubrummels]

I'm not a pickup winder or magnetics expert, but from what I know so far, I might expect lowering the pickup and raising the poles to weaken the strength of the field, but keep the strings intersecting the field path sufficiently to generate enough signal? It's worth noting the path is different for humbuckers vs single coils. The return path of humbuckers goes to the second coil. But need the industry PhDs to comment on the true effect of lowering the inductor coil and extending the poles. I know what it sounds like, but I'm really not sure what it's doing in technical terms.

[eclecticsynergy]

I think basically it's shifting the coil balance in favor of the screw bobbin.
Makes sense that this would give a focused, more singlecoily type sound.

And while the slug coil isn't adding as much to the sound, it's still present for noise reduction

The Dual Sound was pretty beefy: identical to a Super Distortion, only with a 4-wire lead.
Using one in neck position, I'd definitely want it set as low as it could go.

[beaubrummels]

Off the topic, but what exactly is the difference between a Dual Sound and Super Distortion? My SD has 4 conductor. The BMTs are identical. The poles are identical (I think).

[ICTGoober]

Off the topic, but what exactly is the difference between a Dual Sound and Super Distortion?

Originally, I think it was splittable while the SD wasn't. But this could have changed in the intervening years.

[eclecticsynergy]

Off the topic, but what exactly is the difference between a Dual Sound and Super Distortion? My SD has 4 conductor. The BMTs are identical. The poles are identical (I think).

AFAIK it's always been simply a 4-wire version of the the Super D, which originally only came with 2-conductor wiring.
No relation to the so-called Dual Resonance hybrids that came out decades later.

According to DiMarzio, the only difference from the Super D is that the Dual Sound comes with a 500K push-pull included.

EDIT - Here's a link: https://www.dimarzio.com/node/1719