Best Phat Cat adjustments

[alexdesanti]

Hi,

How do you adjust your Phat Cats? Closer or far from strings?

And the pole pieces?

I found some good advices for regular P90s, but I don´t know if there are any major differences btw Phat Cats and standart P90s designs. I don´t know if the magnets are in the same place on both pickups...

I have them in a all maple archtop, with 012 strings, and a wound G. I am after that slightly overdriven tone for jump blues and jazz.

Thanks!

 

[DesertRat]

Re: Best Phat Cat adjustments

Personally, my Phat Cat neck is fairly low cause it gets a bit boomy if I raise it too much. I always adjust the neck p/u for a tone I like then match the bridge to that.

Have you tried flatwound jazz strings? They might help with the vibe you're going for too.

PS minimal adjustments of polepieces so far.

 

[alexdesanti]

Re: Best Phat Cat adjustments

Actually, mine are also pretty far from the stings (yes, I am using flatwounds here) and I like what I hear.

But I read that P90s were often used very close to strings. So, I figured I should check out with the other PC users to see how they set their pickups up. You know, PC and P90s are like cousins an all...

Thanks!

 

[Benjy_26]

Re: Best Phat Cat adjustments

I keep my bridge PC almost kissing the strings and match the poles to the fingerboard radius.

As far as the neck, I keep it flush with the mounting ring and stagger the poles to match a vintage style strat neck pickup's stagger. This gives me a cleaner low end with more chime and snap.

 

[Benjy_26]

Re: Best Phat Cat adjustments

BTW, I have mine in an Epi Sheraton and they sound great for all styles of music, though I mainly play old school country and hard rock with this axe.

 

[alexdesanti]

Re: Best Phat Cat adjustments

Hey,

After some surfing on Seymour Duncan´s website, I found some indications for adjustments on Phat Cats. Here they are:

"Re-string your guitar and adjust the pickup height so that your new pickup is
set between 1/8" and 1/16" from the strings (when they are pressed down at the highest fret on the neck)."

I will try that.

 

[Artie]

Re: Best Phat Cat adjustments

Personally, my Phat Cat neck is fairly low cause it gets a bit boomy if I raise it too much.

Actually, mine are also pretty far from the stings (yes, I am using flatwounds here) and I like what I hear.

I'm still new to the Phat Cat, but I concur. Lowered down seems to work best. (At least, in the neck.)

 

[frankfalbo]

Re: Best Phat Cat adjustments

Here's a little food for thought. Aside from metal Dog Ear covers, P90's have a thick plastic cover, and the pole pieces are raised out of the coil to breach the top of the cover. In the Phat Cat, we drill the bobbins down so that you can lower the poles to be flush with the nickel cover. That could be why a lot of you guys like them a bit farther away from the strings. For me, the most "P90-esque" tone from the Phat Cat comes when I lower them down and raise the pole pieces up quite a bit. That's when it gets a bit ruder and less polished sounding. That's what we did on the P-Rails. The top plate on the P-Rails is pretty thick, so that when the pole pieces are adjusted flush with the top of the pickup, they're actually protruding from the coil to the same degree as with a P90 cover.

For alexdesanti I agree with everyone else so far, that you might want to back them away from the strings a bit. Especially if you're using 12's. Then, if you want to compensate for that wound G, you should do what Benjy does and emulate the stagger of a vintage Strat style pickup. That's a "wound G" stagger.