Recent content by Teleplayer

If buying ebay alnico pickups there is a loss of tone. Things like magnet spec, wire spec, winding pattern seem to make a difference. Saying that, I’m actually happy with the tone of Area 67 stacked single coils. They are not a perfect replacement for true single coils, but using gain there...

I thought the pearly gates may have lower output due to the Alnico 2 magnet. Anyway you should take time to adjust the pickup heights before making any conclusions.

Do you find the neck pickup over-powers the bridge? Otherwise no problems.

It depends which pickups you will use. In my case I also replace the single coils with hum-cancelling stacks or blades. Then it’s logical to put in 500k controls that work with the set of 3 new pickups. Mixing true singles and humbuckers is obviously common, but often requires some tweaks and...

I personally would NOT “add a 250k resistor in series with the humbucker at the switch” . That will kill the brightness and upper mids of the pickup due to NO resonant peak.

You might like a medium output pickup such as Suhr SSV-PLUS ( 10k = DCR). It has bright upper mids, and less hot than JB and S.D. etc. WLH humbucker will be very cutting in a Strat. More so than in a Gibson SG..

I suggest to disconnect the wire to the lower tone pot completely so there is no tone control on the bridge humbucker. With 250k volume control and no tone pot, the SD will have more bite. Edit: Now I see Jeremy posted the same thing.

It depends on your goal, but my suggestion is to use a moderate output neck pickup like Suhr SSV. Otherwise nothing hotter than a SH-1b.

SH-1b with A4 has a similar feel, but I only tried it in a HSS strat, not together with APH-1n. Maybe I will soon.

When going from A2 to A4, it takes away the smoothness from the APH-1 and gives an edge. The upper bass sponginess is similar to A2. The pickup has more bite in the mids and top end. Output is increased and it is possible to raise the pickup closer to the strings as well.

I'm not sure if it will suit your style as it might still be too bright. The clean tone is probably good though.

IMO a blend pot is not a great idea for playing with distortion. It adds a lot of series resistance which kills the resonant peak of the pickups. IMO it is generally better to simply switch the pickups in parrallel. Even the middle P90 is quite a fat sound by itself. I would personally avoid...

Duncan 59b is quite fat sounding in middle position. I liked the 59b, but I have since settled on Suhr SSV neck, which is brighter. Depends what you use it for.

Freefrog’s post was interesting. Maybe try 330pF in parallel with 110k across one of the coils for the SH-6. I tried something similar with a SH-14 in an attempt to get a mid boost, but it was not successful. I added small caps across one of the coils, but I did not use a resistor...

There is an Artie De-mud circuit. It works like a bass-cut and can potentially accentuate the mids. The standard values are a 0.010uF cap and 500k resistor in parallel. If you wish to retain more bass, you could try a 0.015uF or 0.018uF cap instead.