Custom series mag swap?

N

Nickolai

New member
Hi all! I think i'm getting bored of my regular SH-5 Custom in one of my fat strats. Kinda seems a bit like nothing special or maybe just lacks some mids and/or is too much on a bright-ish side. I need to stop buying pickups so i just want to try swapping magnets. Tried a Custom Custom (Alnico2) not too long ago and it was great but, a bit too dark. A bit but quite noticeable, doesn't always work the way i want. Which magnet would be the next richest in mids after A2. Is it UOA5, A4, or the ceramic (that i have now)? Surely not A5, and if it's A8 i don't really care as i don't want to boost output much, i just want the next brighter/more open sounding after CC, which i hope is also the closest in the amount of mids cause that's what i want to keep. Thank you!
 
uoa5 in the custom is great. more bottom than a2, less mids, and clearer high end without being strident. the first c5 i made probably had a uoa5 mag, i just didnt know enough about magnets to know the difference back then. i loved that pup!
 
Thanks a lot everyone, i was kinda 80% sure i need to try the uoa5. The A3 seems close on a paper but it's gonna be even weaker, with even less low end than A2 right? Know nothing about A6 but i guess it's gonna boost output too much? Thanks
 
That's true. A3 in the bridge is slightly thinner and weaker than A2. A6 is about the same heat as A5 but with some low mids.
 
A3 is the weakest alnico magnet of them all. Weaker than A2, A4 and A5. I like it for clean tones in a 59 or Antiquity neck pickup. Never tried it in an overwound bridge pickup like the Custom. But in a 59B and Antiquity B I felt it was too weak for overdriven tones unless I was using a very overdriven setting on my amp or using an overdrive pedal.

I felt that regular polished A5 was kind of bright and steely in the Custom.

RCA5 or UOA5 might be better choice and should give the Custom a more organic tone. I'd try that.
 
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Love the UOA5 and also like the oriented version in rough cast. For my ears, Rough Cast UOA5 provides ultimate organic ‘chewiness’
Ive got a RC UOA5 in a custom wind (started life with a ceramic) and it brought that pickup from the auction block to absolute ‘keeper’ status for me.
 
UA5 has become my preferred choice for bridge mag swaps.
Its worked really well for me in everything I've tried so far (59B, Demon, Custom, and Suhr DSH).
Have been meaning to try A3in a Custom one of these days - tone is great with UA5 but it's still a little compressed.
I think A3 could open it up more, and the Custom wind seems robust enough to keep it strong.

Forum member orpheo posted in 2019 about trying A3 in a Custom and he really liked it.
https://forum.seymourduncan.com/forum/the-pickup-lounge/333234-custom-alnico-3-some-thoughts
 
Meh, I've always been good with my Custom in the LP. It sounds great in there. I even had a former Duncan Dealer get me a double creme Custom/Jazz set, which I pulled the covers off, just to get the Ace look. Think I sold the black set to JeffB. It is what it is. I was playing Peavey Classics back then. Now that I have a little more gain on tap, I can get those tones with other amplifiers. But sometimes I miss my Custom into my C410 or C212 (now sold). It's all relative. My '59s or Fender pups nail those tones into my JSX/XXL or even my VK IIs.
 
Didn't try the Custom in gibsons but i'm thinking i don't like ceramics. At least in strats, they sound kinda harsh to me? Custom was the best ceramic so far but still no. And the japanese flying V replica i had years ago with gibson dirty fingers in the bridge, ew, was cool at the time but no way i will ever need something like that again (i mean DF pickups, i do want a flying V but with smth like hot PAFs maybe)
 
I'm likely going to try a Custom 3 soon myself. Based on various pickups I've put A3s in before, my expectation is it will be darker than the Custom Custom. So far every pickup I've swapped from A2 to A3 has ended up gaining a tiny bit of low end and losing quite a lot of high end, though I do always adjust the pickup height to compensate for the weaker magnet. I expect when people hear the A3 being thinner or brighter it's because they put it at the same height as the A2 pickup, so they get less output and that almost always translates into a brighter sound. If you raise the A3 pickup up a little so it matches the A2 in output, the A3 ends up being the darker of the two. (Again, at least in all the pickups I've tried it in so far, with the Custom 3 probably next.)

A4 and UOA5 are two I have tried in the Custom wind already. Very similar EQ to my ears and just a slight change in output (A4 was a tiny bit hotter when I tried that), small enough that I wouldn't bother favouring one over the other. The most noticeable difference is the A4 had ever-so-slightly sharper pick attack, while the UOA5 was a fraction softer in response. They both sound like the Custom 5 that has been evened out a little, with just a touch more mids and an equally small drop in bass and treble.

When I have a pickup that's just a little bit too dark or needs to open up a little bit (note: I've not done this with a Custom model yet, tends to be more for neck pickups), instead of swapping magnets I just wire in an additional resistor to one coil. The value depends on the pickup in question and exactly how much I need it to open up. Usually I wire up a pot as a 'spin-a-split', turn it until I get the amount of mismatching I want, then disconnect the pot and measure what kind of resistance it's at so I know what resistor to add. It's a bit of effort but it's worth it, as knocking down one coil just the right amount can really open up and brighten a pickup without significantly changing the overall EQ or output. SD use this themselves for the Invader neck model, which as standard has a small capacitor on one coil to make the coils more uneven.
If you could work out what value resistor you need to knock down one of the coils of the Custom Custom by 5-10%, I bet that would lift that darkness but you'd keep the mids you want.
 
Custom A3 is an amazing pickup that did exactly what I needed it to be. Cut away the mush of the Custom Custom, add sweetness to the highs, lower the output so it plays better with singlecoils and open up the midrange. It works very well for what I needed it to do.
 
Yes, I would think that a Custom 3 would be brighter than a Custom Custom.

Sent from my SM-A115A using Tapatalk
 
yes, or at least has less low/mid or bottom so sounds brighter but with a softer sweeter high end than a4, a5, or c8
 
That's the opposite of how I've found every A2>A3 swap so far. Consistently, in every wind I've tried it, the absolute lowest bass takes a dip, the lower-mids get a boost, the upper-mids take a dip and the highest treble stays about the same. It gets more sensitive to positioning/height from the strings, too. Of course there can be variations in results as per different magnet manufacturers and with different sizes of magnets, but that's the 'average' result I've had.

As I said in my previous reply, I'll try out a Custom 3 soon to be sure, but going on my experience with every other A3 swap I've done, less low-mids is exactly what I am not expecting.
 
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