Surprised to have found an example of an exceptional Probucker?

[freefrog]

Free frog, I truly appreciate the time you spend answering questions here!

Okay so if I'm understanding all of this correctly, this effect is entirely accidental and unlikely to be reproduced.

It's had my brain spread spending because I've never heard this before in a single guitar..

You're welcome. Always glad to help as long as my health issues permit it. It helps me to forget them a few minutes, actually.

The effect of unbalanced coil capacitances that I mentioned can be mastered and reproduced: if it wasn't the case, DM Dual-Resonance wouldn't exist. But when it's accidental, it requires to use some capacitance meter and to measure electrically induced resonant peaks, in order to "tune" (in or out) the effect if needed.

This tuning can be done by various means including the mere use of low value caps - a bit in the same way than with the resistor on the bottom of a Duncan Stack, but with a capacitor of the proper value instead of this resistor...


Last but not least: what you had never heard before in a single guitar is what I obtain from my Les Paul number one, whose P.A.F. clones have been built with NOS materials. My neck PU is exactly what you mentioned : loud but chiming. Defiantly fat AND transparent.

Maybe Epi has found how to mimic the recipe with modern materials (I know that some Gibson Custom buckers sound surprisingly close to that real vintage P.A.F. fat n' chiming tone... but they don't appear to be sonically consistent from one year to the other). Maybe this finding is an happy accident limited to a batch of PU's, if not to a single one.

Their advertising doesn't necessarily gives the reason of what you experiment IMHO: many contemporary humbuckers (including some really cheap MIC knock-off products) feature the same kind of proper NS baseplates and bobbins + "correct" PE wire / slugs / screws / magnets... and Epi carefully forgets to mention how their wax-potting potentially defeats some P.A.F. tonal features - that's precisely why I've spontaneously attributed your experience to more than the pickup itself. But without having it here to do some measurements, I can't tell if my idea is anything else than a simple hypothesis, of course.

Enjoy anyway. :-)

[Chistopher]

Anyone have a probucker they can take coil readings on? I know my burstbuckers don't read very far apart in DCR, I'm assuming probuckers are the same

[zionstrat]

Free frog I get the idea of a resistor used to match the resistance of two coils for absolute perfect noise rejection...

"This tuning can be done by various means including the mere use of low value caps - a bit in the same way than with the resistor on the bottom of a Duncan Stack, but with a capacitor of the proper value instead of this resistor..."

I know you've tried to explain this before but I don't get what a capacitor would do in the same situation... I think of capacitors as a way to dump bass in series or treble in parallel...

You posted a number of diagrams that I've understood in the moment but I can't seem to connect the dots to this magic sound... Perhaps you've explained all there is to explain and I just need to go read and read and read again and again :-)

I guess another question is if this sound can be created, why isn't everybody and their brother trying to replicate it ? Or maybe I've just been unlucky and never had the right humbucker in the right guitar?

Even so, I'm surprised I haven't seen other threads where people describe this very specific sound. But I'm glad to hear you got a Les Paul dialed into it!

[freefrog]

Free frog I get the idea of a resistor used to match the resistance of two coils for absolute perfect noise rejection...

"This tuning can be done by various means including the mere use of low value caps - a bit in the same way than with the resistor on the bottom of a Duncan Stack, but with a capacitor of the proper value instead of this resistor..."

I know you've tried to explain this before but I don't get what a capacitor would do in the same situation... I think of capacitors as a way to dump bass in series or treble in parallel...

You posted a number of diagrams that I've understood in the moment but I can't seem to connect the dots to this magic sound... Perhaps you've explained all there is to explain and I just need to go read and read and read again and again :-)

Take two identical coils : if for whatever reason they have different parasitic capacitance values, they won't resonate at the same frequency.

This "dual-resonance" makes humbuckers behave a bit like what one calls "double tuning circuits" in radiophony:

https://www.robkalmeijer.nl/techniek/electronica/radiotechniek/hambladen/qst/1991/12/page29/index.html

And this double tuning creates peaks and dips in the high harmonics, as shown in my aforementiond topic on MEF.

In most cases, these peaks and dips are located beyond the audio range or beyond the narrow bandwidth of typical guitar loudspeakers.

In some cases they can be heard, generating either a loss of high frequencies, either chiming effect due to a narrow secondary peak. That's what DiMarzio Dual-Resonance is all about.

In fact, I had to correct this phenomenon a few times, on bright designs whose unbalanced capacitances were causing a painful drone effect around 11khz... But if these designs had been fat sounding from the start, the secondary 11khz peak would just have compensated their fatness in a nice way. :-)

You'll find as an attached file a 5spice sim showing how a same humbucker can generate secondary peaks or dips in the high range just by changing the capacitance of one coil. Each coil works like a high-pitched VariTone circuit in such cases...

I guess another question is if this sound can be created, why isn't everybody and their brother trying to replicate it ? Or maybe I've just been unlucky and never had the right humbucker in the right guitar?

Even so, I'm surprised I haven't seen other threads where people describe this very specific sound. But I'm glad to hear you got a Les Paul dialed into it!

To me, the sound that you describe might simply be the tone of some real vintage P.A.F.'s, like those that Everybody and their brother ARE trying to replicate under the shape of countless clones...

I clearly remember an article about vintage P.A.F.'s in which the testers were mentioning how much more frequencies these old PU's were "pouring" (to quote their word) compared to modern ones. That's my experience as well... with VERY few pickups these 4 last decades. YMMV.



5spice sim of variable coil capacitance:

[zionstrat]

Wow! Now I get it. The radio side band example really helped...Thank you thank you thank you!


So do you find the dual resonance has the sparkly high-end in most guitars? I have to admit it's not one that I've tried.

[freefrog]

Dual-Resonance is a double-edged sword IME: it can promote high frequencies on a narrow bandwidth OR do the contrary, as illustrated by my 5spice sim.It depends on the proportion between capacitive values of both coils. :-)

[gimmieinfo]

"Probucker Custom neck" ? Well, if u dislike PB's but like this one, ever consider that if it says custom" it's probably different based n the artist's input? I put A3 magnets in my 2023 PB equipped Epi 50s standard LP and the result was it's a different (read MUCH better) guitar since. Maybe this artist version has A3's instead of the 2's in standard PB's?