Seymour Duncans overall bright?

[SF audio]

I've tried a LOT of seymours....and it overall it seems they are on the brighter side. The tone chart shows 7-9 on the treble for most of them, save for a few high powered monsters which I'm not interested in.

Do folks find other brands less bright overall? I have a charvel natural series custom that had a C5 in it, which was a tad bright and too much output, and now a screamin demon which I like, but find it even more bright. Even the 59N seems a bit bright in this guitar.

I'm thinking this guitar needs to try out other brands without that seymour sound...

[Mincer]

Well, I always look for the overall sound of the guitar, and select what it needs...and generally they are less bright SD pickups. The Custom Custom, Alnico II Pro, Five Two, etc are not as bright as some of the others and might work for you.

[freefrog]

These 4 last decades I've mounted a boatload of magnetic transducers and I don't find Duncan's especially bright compared to other mainstream or boutique products. There's even many brighter products out there.

But I've also learned that passive pickups...
1) are "resonant filters" whose maximum output level is always spontaneously focused in the high range (harmonics; hence the treble @ 7-9 in tone charts),
2) but have not their whole sonic spectrum in themselves: they have specs (mainly resistance, inductance, stray capacitance, magnetic field with more or less Foucault currents ) and these specs cooperate in a tonally variable way with other parms: resistance of the pots, parasitic capacitance of the wiring and cable, input impedance of the "host" used to plug the instrument (pedal or amp)... Changing one of these parms will affect the brightness.

Here are a few examples to illustrate what I say:

https://youtu.be/u2sjeVQpS94?t=401

http://zerocapcable.com/wordpress/?page_id=209

http://www.billlawrence.com/Pages/All_About_Tone.htm/CableandSound.htm

Non limitative list, really. And I understand technical vocabulary might "sound" dissuasive. But gathering a bit of knowledge about all that stuff can save a lot of money (example: a tone warming but expensive and cumbersome long and/or coily cable can be sonically emulated by a small and cheap capacitor between hot and ground; Seymour himself did evoke this trick in his FAQ back in the days).

FWIW. Am just trying to share in order to help. :-)

[Clint 55]

Put double thick (A2) magnets in the bridge.

[GuitarStv]

There's a pretty huge range of Duncans. Most of the ones that I like are brighter though.

[jeremy]

i dont find duncans brighter than other brands necessarily. their low output offerings are bright, as one with a decent knowledge of pups would expect. the c5 and demon are both fairly bright pups

[beaubrummels]

I find Duncan pickups clearer than equivalent competitor pickups.

[Masta' C]

I have a charvel natural series custom that had a C5 in it, which was a tad bright and too much output, and now a screamin demon which I like, but find it even more bright. Even the 59N seems a bit bright in this guitar.

I'm thinking this guitar needs to try out other brands without that seymour sound...

It sounds like you're just choosing the wrong Duncans, not that Duncans as a whole are wrong for you!

The Custom 5 is a bit scooped in the mids with a big bottom end and a fairly bright top end. The Screamin' Demon is essentially an underwound Custom 5, which makes it even brighter. The 59N is a vintage output pickup and inherently bright in that regard.

Like Clint #2 said, you could swap the stock A5 magnet in each of those pickups for an A2 and I'm sure you would appreciate the change.

The other option is to look at pickups like the Slash set, the Perpetual Burn, Custom Custom, etc.

In fact, the Custom Custom is the same as your Custom 5, but with an A2 and that simple difference would not only cure the "too bright" phenomenon, it would probably fix the "too much output" issue for you, also!

[Rex_Rocker]

I've noticed that too, but after reading what you guys read, then yeah. I've just been trying the brighter Duncans because that's what I gravitate towards.

It's been a while since I've tried the Invader, but I do remember that being REALLY dark.

Also, for me the Slash was brighter than warm. But I honestly didn't keep that one too long. But it could've been the fact that it was thinner in the lows than the '59B which at the time, I liked. But for me, you can slap A2 magnets in vintage winds all you want, and they'll still come off as bright (to me) because that's just the nature of the wind. JME.

But also keep in mind, Duncan uses nickel baseplates 100% of the time. DiMarzio use brass more than nickel, and they also do the virtual vintage thing which further makes everything darker. So if you want dark, DiMarzio might be better to look at.

[SF audio]

The problem with the A2 mag swap is that you get more mids, and that's what I don't want. I want the A5 sound but without as much top end, which I know is counter to the basic sound of the A5 magnet.
In a perfect world, the C5 sound with less output would be ideal. I guess the 59B might sort of be like this...I may try that next..

The custom hybrid looks good too, but that adds mids when combining the 59 coil with the custom coil?

[Rex_Rocker]

The '59B is brighter than the Custom 5.

[freefrog]

Yes, all other parms being equal, a 59 is meant to be brighter than a Custom 5. It will sound like a weaker Custom only if its resonant peak is set at the same frequency and shaped in the same way... by manipulating LRC specs, as mentioned in my first post. :-P

And in a Custom hybrid, all other parms being still equal, it's the Custom coil which adds mids to the 59 by rising the overall inductance, not the contrary.

[Clint 55]

The problem with the A2 mag swap is that you get more mids, and that's what I don't want. I want the A5 sound but without as much top end, which I know is counter to the basic sound of the A5 magnet.
In a perfect world, the C5 sound with less output would be ideal. I guess the 59B might sort of be like this...I may try that next..

The custom hybrid looks good too, but that adds mids when combining the 59 coil with the custom coil?

Use a double thick A5 in the bridge then. It rounds it out.

There's also A6 which does have a bit more mids than A5, but responds like A5 and has a bit less treble.

[beaubrummels]

I want the A5 sound but without as much top end, which I know is counter to the basic sound of the A5 magnet.
In a perfect world, the C5 sound with less output would be ideal. I guess the 59B might sort of be like this...I may try that next..

The custom hybrid looks good too, but that adds mids when combining the 59 coil with the custom coil?

UOA5 or A4 then.

I think a Jazz Bridge is more like a lower output Custom 5 to me, but that's just my experience. The 59 in my experience wasn't as bright as a Custom 5 or Jazz Bridge. (So my experience was different from RexRocker's. Could be the different guitars we were using? I was using them in my SG and LP Studio mainly.)

59/Custom wasn't mid-heavy to me when I used it. It was pretty even across the board. When odd coils are combined, it isn't a 50/50 mix of the previous pickups. One coil will kind of dominate and then be extended or attenuated by the other coil.

[freefrog]

FWIW, I share below the objective spectrum of two bridge pickups in the same guitar, played in chords direct to the board through a 1M input : a 59b (blue) and an Hybrid (red).

Upper pic = these PU's with their actual level. Bottom pic = Hybrid aligned on the 59 level wise, in order to show which frequencies they share or not.



Should illustrate how the higher inductance of the Hybrid gives it more power, more focused on high mids before a proportionally narrower high range, VS the 59, weaker but whose higher pitched resonant frequency is translated by an extended high range / more treble relatively to other frequencies.

If I posted another comparison of the same pickups played in single notes, the response of the Hybrid would show more comb filtered harmonics: it's the main actual effect of coils asymetry.

Of course, the result would be different with another guitar, different pots values / cable capacitance / input impedance and so on.

But... you'll "get the pic".

Regarding perceived brightness, let's keep in mind that it doesn't depend only on all the parms evoked above, but also on other things like the scale of the guitar or... the peaks and dips of the cab(s) used: if a pickup and a loudspeaker promote the same high harmonics, it will sound bright even if the transducer has a narrow bandwidth. If the resonance of a pickup aligns with a dip in the spectrum of the cab, this brightness will be way less perceptible or absent. If a pickup is bright enough to resonate way beyond the bandwidth of a speaker, the tone might paradoxically appear as... flatter if not darker, because the pickup focuses its energy on a frequency that the cab can't reproduce (!). Various experiments have been done here on this subject.