Brighten up a covered pickup

E

Entheogen

New member
So here is the deal. I have an epiphone G-400 that I had had since I was a teenager (over 20 years). roughly 18 years ago I swapped the bridge pickup for a screamin demon. It really gave the guitar an amazing bite. The only drawback was that now I had a black uncovered pickup in the guitar and a covered pickup and aesthetically it was not that pleasing. I recently put a nickel plated cover on that pickup. The guitar looks much better in my opinion but it darkened the tone a bit and hurt the sustain. When I play it sometimes almost sounds like a bridge pickup with the tone turned up to 11, and I lost he bite. I am trying to find that sweet spot with the pickup height and pole height and that is helping some.

I had read different takes on if the cover would affect the tone and came back with it would make a change but it would be minimal. I hear it as more than minimal and part of it could be in my head. Currently it has the stock 500k pots for tone and volume. I have a different project guitar that I have a spare Orange Drop .033m capacitor for that I was thinking about putting on the tone pot to see if that will do anything, the other thought I had was to swap the volume pot for a 1m. Am I going down the right path here? I know I could just take the cover off, but I am trying to avoid that if at all possible.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

just for reference the stock pots are A500k for tone with what I am assuming is a .022m cap and B500K for volume
 
Brighten up a covered pickup

It depends on the cover. Thinner is better, and brass covers are darker sounding than nickel silver. But you don’t find brass used too often.

But this is why people started removing the covers in the first place. Maybe try an open top cover. Or you can find covers with slots in them. That’s why Filter’Trons have the H shaped cutout.

Tone caps only effect the tone when you turn the pot down. But none of those things will stop the cover from dulling the top end and lowering the resonant peak of the pickup. Unless you use a plastic cover.


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Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

DavidRavenMoon said:
It depends on the cover. Thinner is better, and brass covers are darker sounding than nickel silver. But you don’t find brass used too often.

But this is why people started removing the covers in the first place. Maybe try an open top cover. Or you can find covers with slots in them. That’s why Filter’Trons have the H shaped cutout.

Tone caps only effect the tone when you turn the pot down. But none of those things will stop the cover from dulling the top end and lowering the resonant peak of the pickup. Unless you use a plastic cover.


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Click to expand...

Thanks for the input. It is a duncan brand pickup cover in nickel silver and not a brass cover. I am trying to avoid having to go in and undo all of my 30 minutes of hard work. I thought about swapping it out for a plastic cover. One thing I did notice when I seated the cover was that it would not go 100% down. There was still maybe a 1/16' of an inch gap between the screw top pole pieces and the bottom of the cover. I backed the poles out to be flush with the top of the cover. I used a spring clamp to hold the cover in place while I was soldering the cover edges to the back of the pickup. I was nervous to use too much force to force the cover down and damage the cover or the pickup. I did use a small dot of silicone adhesive on the underside of the cover just to reduce vibration and any mechanical noise as well.

This is the joy of learning to do things yourself and wondering if you F'd it up beyond belief or if you are just experiencing the learning curve of how finicky guitar electronics are.
 
Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

The issue with metal covers is when you put a conductor in a magnetic field current flows on the surface. In this case these are called eddy currents. These currents produce their own magnetic field that opposes the field from the magnet.

This is what cases the tonal change. Breaking up the surface area, like on a Filter’Tron reduces the eddy currents.

Unfortunately you either have to live with the tonal change or not use a metal cover.

I make some pickups with closed chrome covers because they look nice. But I prefer no covers in my guitars for the tone.


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Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

Would swapping out the volume pot for a 1M or if I can find it, a 750k help? Keep in mind this is an overseas made epiphone so who knows if this pot is really a 500k.
 
Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

"no load" tone pot might brighten it. It also guarantees that the value of the cap won't matter when all the way up.
 
Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

First thing I thought of is a 1meg pot. Removing a cover makes it a tiny bit brighter, but to be honest, by the time I got everything back together, I doubt I'd hear a difference. Some do. Pot values will make a bigger difference.
 
Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

If you lower the pickup just a bit and raise the pole pieces under each string, it will brighten the tone up. Just play with how far to lower and how much to raise the pole pieces. Too low with the pickup and you lose power and bite. There is a good balance there for you somewhere.
 
Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

If the cover really is not seated down on top of the pickup like you suggest that would mess with your height adjustment. Personally I would start by pulling the cover back off, cleaning out the silicone (it will have set by now), and do it over. This time push that cover down tight! Unless you hit it with a hammer or shear the lead wire you won't damage a pickup by giving it a good squeeze.
 
Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

Mojo Tone has some unplated nickel covers. Very thin. Best you can do and still have a full cover. I prefer an open pickup and use the surround style, where the whole surface is open and no metal incursions at all.
 
Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

Lower capacitance instruments cables can help as well to add some brightness, dont need to get too expensive ones either.
 
Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

It's an SG copy and an Epiphone at that, ditch both covers it'll look totally normal

Gibson churns out and sells plenty of uncovered pickup SGs
 
Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

Howlermonkey said:
"no load" tone pot might brighten it. It also guarantees that the value of the cap won't matter when all the way up.
Click to expand...

I did this along with lowering the pickup and it made a significant difference. I am going to keep playing with my height and see if I can squeeze anything else out of it.
 
Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

It was a budget guitar that my dad bought for me as a birthday present when I turned 15 (35 now). Its the only new musical instrument I have ever owned and since my pops passed 15 years ago I promised my mom that I would never get rid of it or another guitar he bought me. I have taken that guitar all over the eastern half of the US playing with different bands. Now that my life is settling down somewhat post having kids I am stating to play music again. I know that guitar so well that I figure a little modification and adjustments might go a long way to make it play/sound like a guitar that costs twice as much. Modifying cheap guitars is kinda fun anyway.
 
Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

Hasn't somebody created a plastic cover using 3d printing? I'm pretty sure I read about it somewhere, but I can't find it with google.

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Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

Seriously, it really would be much simpler to just remove the cover from the neck pickup so they match.
 
Re: Brighten up a covered pickup

Raise the polepieces on the pickup and drop it’s overall height a tad.

You could use a higher value por for the neck volume though I don’t know it would be the change you’re looking for.


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