Experimental pickup installation

[esppse]

Hello,

I'm building a unique custom guitar that will have 6 pickups in it. The pickups will be pushed tightly together to fit.

My question is, what are the tonal results when pickups are sitting right next to each other less than 1mm apart.

Does that increase or decrease the output of any given pickup, and does it make each given pickup brighter or darker?

Any other things that might come into play I may miss?

It's a P90, single coil, stack, HB, sustainer, and piezo...

Thank

 

[Adieu]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

Piezo doesnt count, it's not a magnetic pickup

The rest will produce roughly 2x the mag pull of a typical HH setup... conventional wisdom is to avoid exceeding that of HHH, although I guess it depends on the magnets, and factory guitars with 3 big magged buckers with high power magnets (including 3x doublethick ceramic and 3x oversized A8) have been quite successful and desirable

Imho for your interests, try unifying some stuff into one...maybe piezo saddles/bridge, a Prail, single coil, hotrail, and the sustainer, plus tricky switching to mix them up

 

[Mincer]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

Welcome to the forum!

What are you trying to achieve here? I can't imagine there would be an issue with the output- Steve Morse used many pickups on his old Tele, and it sounded great. But with your system, and the preamp for the piezo and sustainer, there will be a mess of wiring. I'd love to hear how this turns out.

 

[esppse]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

Thanks for the replies, I'm simply just trying to make a super versatile guitar, exploring new combinations. An issue I have currently is the sustainer failing to cooperate with a Lace Alumitone. I am swapping that out for a Bare knuckle black dog, and a Seymour P90 stack in the neck(next to the sustainer). I just emailed Bare knuckle, and they said magnets may demagnetize, which does raise concern with consistency. Is demagnetization a serious issue for my setup?

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

Playing devil’s advocate here, Telecasters are generally regarded as quite versatile with only two pickups.

You’ll probably have better luck if you have specific tonal goals in mind.

 

[Adieu]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

Thanks for the replies, I'm simply just trying to make a super versatile guitar, exploring new combinations. An issue I have currently is the sustainer failing to cooperate with a Lace Alumitone. I am swapping that out for a Bare knuckle black dog, and a Seymour P90 stack in the neck(next to the sustainer). I just emailed Bare knuckle, and they said magnets may demagnetize, which does raise concern with consistency. Is demagnetization a serious issue for my setup?

Potentially.

Having large ceramics or A8's crammed in close proximity with weaker alnicos and/or reverse polarity pups will mess with them

 

[esppse]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

The only ceramic I will have is the Fast track 2, it's a stack ceramic with high output, would that be considered a large ceramic that may be problematic?

One of my single coils is reversed because of the flange fitting, I'll try to flip that back to normal polarity.

A thought I am giving is to replace the ceramic magnet of the Fast track 2 stack to alnico V, since my guitar is already so acoustically scooped from the chambering, I may require more midrange, I just spent 350 on pickups, and can't afford another alnico V pickup now, since a magnet is rather affordable, I may just try a simple mag swap with the dimarzio stack.

 

[Adieu]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

The only ceramic I will have is the Fast track 2, it's a stack ceramic with high output, would that be considered a large ceramic that may be problematic?

One of my single coils is reversed because of the flange fitting, I'll try to flip that back to normal polarity.

A thought I am giving is to replace the ceramic magnet of the Fast track 2 stack to alnico V, since my guitar is already so acoustically scooped from the chambering, I may require more midrange, I just spent 350 on pickups, and can't afford another alnico V pickup now, since a magnet is rather affordable, I may just try a simple mag swap with the dimarzio stack.

Pretty sure single coil polarity is up/down, not right/left

 

[freefrog]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

1-A link that you might find interesting, especially regarding the mag field of P90's: http://www.moore.org.au/pick/06/06_gobd.htm

2-A testimonial: I've already noticed tonal alterations with a SC immediately next to a HB... AND some serious squealing was happening with high gain.

3-If time permits, I'll try to search some experimental data in my archives about that.

4-Anyway, a minimal gap between PU's seems required for tonal versatility, as it was the case in the instrument customized by Steve Morse: https://www.guitarinteractivemagazi...ght=505&bgcolor=ffffff&rnd=131655976120000000

Oh, and... good luck in your project!

 

[Discharged]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

I'm building a unique custom guitar that will have 6 pickups in it

You're going towards the path to failure. Not trying to be a Cassandra, but simply a word of advice of somebody that can attest "been there, done that, didn't work".

Consider yourself warned.

/Peter

 

[esppse]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

Ah wonderful article! Thanks for your input, I was afraid of this. What I am going to do is when my new pickups arrive, I'll install them one by one and observe the changes in the sound between them.

 

[esppse]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

You're going towards the path to failure. Not trying to be a Cassandra, but simply a word of advice of somebody that can attest "been there, done that, didn't work".

Consider yourself warned.

/Peter

Can you clarify on your experiences with this number of pickups please?

 

[Adieu]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

Disclaimer: I dropped college physics too early to verify if this is BS or not.... but here's some crap I googled up on magnetc shieldimg

http://www.coolmagnetman.com/magshield.htm

PS buyer beware: LOTS of tinfoil hatters, both pretenders and true believers, in the magnetic shielding biz

 

[esppse]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

I was thinking of magnetic shielding, I am curious to know what material is most effective and thin, since with current cavities routed, I can only fit a sheet of paper between them lol

 

[Howlermonkey]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

You need some way to visualize the magnetic field for proper pickup placement or they could fight each other.

Your sustainer pickup should be placed as close to the neck as possible and the bridge pickup it uses should be as far away from it as possible.

I pretty much only put sustainers on 22 or 21 fret necks and only on 2 pickup guitars without a pickguard just to keep as much as possible between the sustainer transmitting pickup and the bridge pickup that feeds it. You don't want the sustainer "talking" to the other pickups.

 

[NegativeEase]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

Aside from pickup Interaction between 6 pickups and shielding, I would be concerned about the affecting propagation of the waveform along the string. You can get some strange overtones from too much magnetic interaction especially across a longer cross section -like you are proposing.

 

[esppse]

Re: Experimental pickup installation

Hmm yeah I'll try out the sustainer with the P90 and the stack removed first, the holes are unfortunately all routed lol, I'd rather put a pickup than a dummy cover at this point, next build will be simpler. I will try metal shims between the pickup to minimize cross induction, and as far as the overtones, that may very well be a permanent characteristic of this one build now