RayBarbeeMusic
Member
I've been on a quest for years to come up with a neck humbucker that wasn't muddy/boomy, and that was articulate and clear for fast picking.
I experimented with variations on 40 ga wire winds, Firebirds hidden under full sized covers, minis hidden under full sized covers, etc. The firebirds do really well, but they seem to have an output limitation. No matter what magnet/wire you use or how you wind them, they don't seem to ever exceed a 'hot single-coil' level of output. In some things that works fine, but with a hotter bridge humbucker there is just too much difference. Adding more wire just makes them darker, using thinner wire shifts the tone a little but that's it, using ceramic makes them a tad brighter but not any louder.
Last night I came up with the closest thing I've heard yet. I started by swapping out a bunch of things through the neck of a Les Paul. That is probably the most demanding application for this, as the neck position on a Les Paul can turn even the brightest/tightest humbucker into a mud ball. After going through about 6 other things, I popped a Full Shred neck in there, which is about the best commercially available solution I've found for a lot of guitars. In the LP, it sounded great up high, but the low strings below about the 7th fret were just muddy and inarticulate.
So I thought about that for a minute, and though that what I really want is that type of high string tone but with a more single-coil response on the low strings. So I yanked the neck side coil pole pieces on ONLY the bottom three strings. That improved it a lot, but then of course the high strings didn't balance with the low strings. I tilted it so that the pickup was farther away on the high strings, then I raised pole pieces on the bridge side coil on each string until I got a balanced output on each string.
Result? AWESOME. That great articulate, chewy/liquid but still fat FSN high string sound is there, and there is no boom/mud at all in the bass. It doesn't thwack like a single coil on the low notes, but it does have single coil articulation when I play down low and balances very well. It reminded me quite a bit of early Yngwie tone he got with the HS-3 necks in that it was fat but very responsive and liquid at the same time. My only complaint is that it could be a little brighter/thwackier like a real single on the low strings, but it is a massive improvement over any other full sized bucker application I've tried, and they are legion.
Of course that can only be done on a bucker with two rows of adjustable screws, unless you want to tap out slugs, but I like the result so much I don't see a reason why I won't do that from now on.
I experimented with variations on 40 ga wire winds, Firebirds hidden under full sized covers, minis hidden under full sized covers, etc. The firebirds do really well, but they seem to have an output limitation. No matter what magnet/wire you use or how you wind them, they don't seem to ever exceed a 'hot single-coil' level of output. In some things that works fine, but with a hotter bridge humbucker there is just too much difference. Adding more wire just makes them darker, using thinner wire shifts the tone a little but that's it, using ceramic makes them a tad brighter but not any louder.
Last night I came up with the closest thing I've heard yet. I started by swapping out a bunch of things through the neck of a Les Paul. That is probably the most demanding application for this, as the neck position on a Les Paul can turn even the brightest/tightest humbucker into a mud ball. After going through about 6 other things, I popped a Full Shred neck in there, which is about the best commercially available solution I've found for a lot of guitars. In the LP, it sounded great up high, but the low strings below about the 7th fret were just muddy and inarticulate.
So I thought about that for a minute, and though that what I really want is that type of high string tone but with a more single-coil response on the low strings. So I yanked the neck side coil pole pieces on ONLY the bottom three strings. That improved it a lot, but then of course the high strings didn't balance with the low strings. I tilted it so that the pickup was farther away on the high strings, then I raised pole pieces on the bridge side coil on each string until I got a balanced output on each string.
Result? AWESOME. That great articulate, chewy/liquid but still fat FSN high string sound is there, and there is no boom/mud at all in the bass. It doesn't thwack like a single coil on the low notes, but it does have single coil articulation when I play down low and balances very well. It reminded me quite a bit of early Yngwie tone he got with the HS-3 necks in that it was fat but very responsive and liquid at the same time. My only complaint is that it could be a little brighter/thwackier like a real single on the low strings, but it is a massive improvement over any other full sized bucker application I've tried, and they are legion.
Of course that can only be done on a bucker with two rows of adjustable screws, unless you want to tap out slugs, but I like the result so much I don't see a reason why I won't do that from now on.
