Re: A Medium output pickup idea...
Luke Duke said:
Definitely keep us updated!
(Be careful what you wish for...)
Here is the review of said "X-pickup" and it is a HUGE success. There is a lot to talk about and I will try to keep it as brief as possible, but this is likely still going to be a
LONG POST.
I now understand the reason for the good reviews this guy has gotten. His pickups make all the bridge position Duncans and Gibsons and others I've ever tried sound just so tonally lop-sided, hollow, peaky-notchy, however you want to say it. (It has this but it lacks that; this other one has that but lacks this and the other thing, etc., the kind of stuff that made us try the hybrid idea to begin with.) This guy has found a wind that fills in the scoops and flattens the spikes and makes the pickup sound.....well, COMPLETE is the only word that fits.
The way I now have this pickup tweaked, it sounds like my dream overwound PAF sounds in my head -- the ideal combination of beef, honk, bark, shimmer and sparkle all in one. It's very dynamically responsive and extremely articulate, especially on the attack. Instead of homogenizing the subtleties and variations of your individual picking technique as most pickups do to one degree or another, this pickup seems to magnify them and invites you to explore different picking techniques and touches. The articulation of notes on all three wound strings, especially the low E, is startling.
All of this is twice as true on when playing clean. This pickup doesn't have the fast, jangly decay most bridge pickups have on clean settings. Even though it is so dynamically responsive, there is a slightly compressed quality that makes the notes bloom on even the most squeaky-clean amp settings. I play my blues pure clean to only the slightest break-up, so this is a very desirable quality. It also helps when you want to do swirly, futuristic keyboard-like volume swells as I like to do.
My Les Paul now sounds the way I've always thought a Les Paul should sound -- authoritative but clear, with tone and sustain for days.
NOW FOR THE TECH/TINKER TALK:
The whole purpose of this pickup was experimental, to find out:
a) If high-low hybrids (vintage coil + high output coil) are what they've been cracked up to be in here, and
b) If it's worth the trouble to tap a humbucker coil.
c) If you can have a bridge humbucker with extreme versatility, rather than just jack-of-all-trades mediocrity.
Answer yes on all counts. If you recall the specs from the previous post, I had it set up with a 6.5k screw coil, 4.5k slug, with a tap on the screw coil at 5k. I wanted this tap so I could use a switch to choose between 9.5k and 11k. He and I settled on an Alnico 3 magnet, but I wasn't concerned about the magnet so much since I have plenty of all four Alnico types on hand to experiment with.
The 9.5k setting was a wonderful overwound PAF sound. If you're looking for that and nothing else, I recommend ordering one with a 5k screw coil and a 4.5k slug coil straight up -- you won't need any of the extra bells and whistles I have on mine.
The 11.2k setting (the extra 1.5k on the screw coil was about 0.2k over spec at 1.7k) gives you a wonderful wide, barking tone but was there was a loss of some (not much) of the articulation found on the 9.5 setting -- but that's to be expected when you're running much up above 10k.
The single coil (6.7k) setting was surprisingly Strat-like (I A/B'd it with my Strat on bridge pickup and it was really close) but still a hair on the thin side. However Strats actually do sound that way when you plug one in after playing an LP for a while, so I wanted it a little thicker so it would sound at home on my LP.
See PART 2: SOLUTIONS, next...
would be if you had the low mids spike you get with the A2 mag.
