Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

[Chistopher]

I got the chance to play a EVH Wolfgang guitar today and noticed that the neck pickup sounded a little hotter than the bridge. I looked at the specs online later today which confirmed my suspicions. The traditional way of thinking is that the neck is wound less to prevent the pickup from being to boomy and the bridge wound more to prevent it from being too thin. The EVH is just the opposite. There must also be a lot of trickery in the wind or magnets in order to prevent a volume issue, does anyone have any information on this topic or has done it to one of their own guitars?

 

[Demanic]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

I have an old Jackson DXMG. It has a JB in the bridge. It has some no name Oriental pickup that I swapped the ceramic with an A5 in the neck. It measures 8.5k. sounds great.

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[Chistopher]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

8.5k? I don't think that's hotter than a JB

 

[gregory]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

With an extremely strong magnetic field in the neck position, it very well could be.

You've told us scant little about about your research into what you have on your hands. Would you mind getting us up to speed?

 

[waltschwarzkopf]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

I just did something similar on my strat. I put the bridge humbucker on thr neck (15kOhm) and moved the neck single to the bridge (5kOhm). Now the bridge sounds very thick and bassy which I use fot soloing, and the bridge is trebbly and never overpowers the neck, it is exactly what I wanted. I'm considering buying a SH Tele since some of them come like that.


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[dave74]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

This thread is getting confusing lol.

Are we talking output or dcr?

Take the x2n and the dominion for example, both are about the same dcr but totally different output levels.

 

[KNUCKLHEAD]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

I just did something similar on my strat. I put the bridge humbucker on thr neck (15kOhm) and moved the neck single to the bridge (5kOhm). Now the bridge sounds very thick and bassy which I use fot soloing, and the bridge is trebbly and never overpowers the neck, it is exactly what I wanted. I'm considering buying a SH Tele since some of them come like that.

I've ran em' similar + U can just use pedals to boost/gain bridge if needed

 

[oilpit]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

If by hot you mean something traditionally for the bridge position, or some kind of high dcr pickup with or without a strong magnet in the neck position. If the tone you are looking for comes from a "hotter" neck pickup then you should absolutely pursue it. Just make sure you find a bridge pickup that gets along with it and a setup that accommodates pickups so extreme.

If you mean hot as in actual output aka volume then there is literally no reason to ever put a hotter pickup in the neck than in the bridge, ever.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

I have a set of vintage p90's where the 6.9k one in the bridge volume matches the 8.1k one in the neck

 

[waltschwarzkopf]

Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

If you mean hot as in actual output aka volume then there is literally no reason to ever put a hotter pickup in the neck than in the bridge, ever.

What do you mean by this?

I modded my guitar to have that, 15k in the neck and 5k in the bridge. I like the extreme contrast and since I use each pickup for a different purpose it works very well. However, in order to have even more (or less) contrast I'm thinking about adding independent volume/tones for each.


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[The JEM Ghost]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

What do you mean by this?

I don't want to answer in oilpit's place, but just want to put out my opinion here!
DC resistance and output are not the same thing, they don't go hand in hand all the time, meaning you can have a 18K pickup that has less output than a 10K pickup. I agree completely with oilpit that towards having a balanced volume between pickups, you should not put a much louder pickup in the neck spot than the one in the bridge, it becomes almost impossible to balance the output that way. You may be able to compensate small output differences with pickup height, but a noticable louder pickup in the neck is asking for imbalanced volume output between pickups.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

I've met some that like to have a hotter pickup in the neck. Some like a much hotter bridge pickup. Some like them balanced (like me). There are no rules here, and it is fairly easy to experiment (even easier with the Liberatorr).

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

Sorry for not commenting sooner, I went to bed early yesterday. But what I was referring to is having a pickup with a higher DCR in the neck. The factory specs on the wolfgang are ~14k for the bridge and ~16k for the neck, both with A2 magnets and 44G Polysol wire. It appears to me that the neck is just the bridge wound a little hotter.

I thought at first this was just Eddie being Eddie and being different just for the sake of being different (like the dummy switch in the Frankenstrat), but I realized how often he uses the neck pickup live nowadays, do I started thinking that maybe their is actually something too it. But with humbuckers of similar construction, what's the point of making a thick bridge pickup slightly thicker in the neck?

 

[Progbusters]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

i got Demon in the neck and its louder than the Custom 5, if that's what you mean. Its odd, unless I'm doing the neck soloing like yngwie, I wish.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

I'm not referring to volume differences, I'm refering to a neck pickup having a hotter tone.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

Sounds like some don't realize that if you put two identical pickups in your guitar (two identical 8.15k 59B pickups for example) that the one in the neck will always be louder?

Its because the string moves more or vibrates in a wider excursion over the neck pickup than it does over the bridge pickup.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

Now that I think about it, the neck pickup was set a bit low, that probably both accounted for the volume difference and fixed some of the bassiness of the neck pickup.

 

[Johnny the Kid]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

I'm not referring to volume differences, I'm refering to a neck pickup having a hotter tone.

DCR doesn't aways equate to hotter tone.

Personally, I think having two balanced pickups is good. Its why I high output pickups in the bridge and balance those with a vintage hot pickup in the neck.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

That's what I'm trying to ask, the "standard" setup for most dual humbucker guitars is to have a hot bridge pickup and a PAF/articulate neck pickup. This is seen in many sets such as Jazz/JB, Paf Pro/Super Distortion, and 496r/500t. Then there are sets that have the neck and bridge being the same pickup (Seth Lovers) which have the volume difference created as you have stated above. Wouldn't having a neck pickup that is just the bridge wound 2k hotter only make this problem worse?

 

[Johnny the Kid]

Re: Does anyone else put a hotter pickup in the neck position?

Wouldn't having a neck pickup that is just the bridge wound 2k hotter only make this problem worse?

In my opinion, yes. But as Mincer said above, it is personal preference. There are lot of people, myself included, that use the neck pickup for lead work, so if someone is exclusively using it for that, the neck pup being much hotter is probably useful because it doesn't require a boost in addition.