A few questions popped up in my mins, I hope you can help...
What about the metal spacer? Do I add another one? Won't this affect the tone and how?
Also I'd like to know if the double thick magnet will make the sound more compressed?
A8 PG still too scratchy... Anyone tried an A8 in a SNS?
- Thread starter WDeeGee
- Start date
A few questions popped up in my mins, I hope you can help...
What about the metal spacer? Do I add another one? Won't this affect the tone and how?
Also I'd like to know if the double thick magnet will make the sound more compressed?
freefrog
Well-known member
+1. The sonic character of a Pearly Gates is largely due to its higher Q factor, giving a narrower and sharp resonant peak. No mag swap can solve that.
Clint 55
OH THE DOUBLE THICK GLAZE!
Adding a metal spacer is optional. Duncan pickups that use double thick magnets only use 1. No, a double thick magnet won't add compression. The opennes of the vintage wind is maintained, with the positives that I explained earlier.
does the jb have a similar higher q factor? ive always heard some similarity between the eq curve of those two pups
Yeah I don't mind the Pearly Gates character it's just that the guitar's own upper "resonant peak" coincides with that of the PG's so it's a little much. It needs a bit of taming, that's all. I'm not against the PG's voicing. In fact, I really like its clarity and great note definition. The guitar also has a low frequency bump that gives the PG a lot of balls, while being absolutely not muddy at all.
I wired a resistor in parallel with the vol pot so the PG sees 350k ohms and I must say we're getting close. 250k loses too much sparkle.
freefrog
Well-known member
Hi Jeremy,
If memory serves me, no, the JB has not quite the same kind of narrow pointy resonant peak than the PG. But it has a resonant frequency typically located in the "lower upper mids", so to speak. Hence a similar "insistent" effect on our audition, in my understanding / IMHO.
freefrog
Well-known member
I certainly understand your approach, since I often tend to "tune" a wiring harness according to the guitar hosting it. Looks like your guitar wants a 300k vol pot.
)BTW, is your PG covered? Eddy currents due to covers are another simple way to mellow annoying prominent frequencies IME/IMHO - a "bad" cover has sometimes a good effect.
freefrog
Well-known member
FWIW, all "bad" covers are not created equal: some are thicker than others, with the related effect in terms of Foucault currents. Golden covers have their own influence too, as chrome covers - which add inductance to pickups and change their harmonics...
Reason why I admit to go by trial and error rather than by "known material". Then I measure resonant peaks with a lab rig and am often surprised by what I see or hear.
It's a bit the same with magnets: we have a lab teslameter here and I tend to base my choices on the measured magnetic field, rather than on the alloy supposed to compose a mag. And the results are sometimes surprising too.
Regarding what you asked about "metal spacers", a.k.a. pole shoes / keeper bars: like any part containing iron added to the circuit, a double thick keeper bar would slightly increase the inductance and eddy currents. But it would also introduce a risk of high pitched feedback due to mechanical vibrations...
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Wound_Up
New member
English is all I've ever spoken and I still don't have a clue what "scratch city" means so don't worry about it too much. But I also don't have a clue what a scratchy humbucker is, either. So many people use works to describe how a pickup sounds that have nothing to do with describing how it actually sounds that I don't even know where to begin when attempting to figure out all off these buzz words.
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Gtrjunior
New member
I have zero idea what a “clanky” pickup sounds like. Yet I see people describe a pickup with that word fairly often. Lol
eclecticsynergy
New member
For non-native-English speakers (or even speakers of the King's English), American idiom can be pretty obscure sometimes.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries many American cities became known for a certain characteristic.
New York City had many radio stations and came to be known as Radio City - there still is a Radio City Music Hall.
Schenectady, the home of General Electric, was called Electric City.
Even today Chicago is known as the Windy City.
Adding "city" or "town" became a common expression, meaning "home of" or "a place of."
flavor town = a place of good flavor
scratch city = where scratchy tone lives
In the 19th and early 20th centuries many American cities became known for a certain characteristic.
New York City had many radio stations and came to be known as Radio City - there still is a Radio City Music Hall.
Schenectady, the home of General Electric, was called Electric City.
Even today Chicago is known as the Windy City.
Adding "city" or "town" became a common expression, meaning "home of" or "a place of."
flavor town = a place of good flavor
scratch city = where scratchy tone lives
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eclecticsynergy
New member
To me "clanky" has a distinctively metallic connotation.
Many materials can clatter or rattle.
But only metal clanks.
Gtrjunior
New member
That’s sort of what I would imagine too but it just seems like an odd word to describe a pickup to me.
Gtrjunior
New member
Haha! When I wrote that, I was 100% thinking of you. Lol
Bowtomecha
New member
I wanted to love a8 but the metal clang it introduced only became more noticeable as I kept playing with one, I think it’s only good in a pickup that deficient in those particular frequencies. I’m thinking that an alternate 8 would sound underwhelming with an A5 mag.
BluesIsBlood12
New member
Don't feel bad. I am a native English speaker, and I don't know what that means either.
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