Experimental stack/humbucker idea

Clint 55 said:
I think you should predetermine how much wire you want on each pup. Unless you're clueless, which you aren't lol. If you want input from them, then give them a call and talk it over. Imo, it's your pickup, get it the way you want it. This design will probably require a phone call anyway.
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Absolutely, I’m gonna call them when I’m ready to order. But I wanted to bounce off ideas with you guys first. The thing is, I’m still not sure if it’ll be one pickup with three coils, or a stack + a single coil macgyvered together on the guitar. I don’t really mind which, as long as the tones are right. I’m gonna redo the pickup cavities anyway.

As for output, my 7s currently has a Full Shred neck, which I’m finding incredibly weak. Might be because of the soapbar plastic covers interfering with the magnetic field (like I said, the guitar came with EMG 707s, so I had to order the pups with the covers to fit the cavity). My 6s has a bridge 59 in the neck (the Dimebag trick), which I love. I want the output of the CS pup to be enough that I don’t need to mess with the gain when switching guitars, and for it to match the bridge pup (currently an X2N7, might/probably will switch to an SH5 later).
 
To reply to the post 20: I don't know if I really "should" answer . LOL. :-P

More seriously: separate dummy coils can work absolutely fine with normal pickups IME. But they have to be properly placed and sometimes, it requires some unusual routing...

My Strat number 2 is like this, for instance: http://www.vintagekramer.com/Focus/classic-underthepickguard pickup.jpeg

I hadn't to do that to my number one with its noiseless SC sized pickups. :-)

... Now I've also an experimental Strat with a way larger rear routing done to host vast noise cancelling coils in the Ilitch fashion. ;-)

In other (Gibson/Gretsch style) guitars with P90 or DynaSonic SC's, I've put dummy coils next to the pots in the electronic cavity without any issue and it works (better than an Ilitch coil, whose efficience is IMHO limited to Fender style PU's).

IOW, there's several possible solutions when it comes to buck the hum and the option to choose is very guitar/pickups dependent IME. YMMV. :-)
 
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chadd said:
Maybe on a WRHB base?
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On a 7-string? Maybe if everything works out I’ll get 6-string versions for future guitars, or if we can convince SD to produce them regularly, that might be a good idea to make sure everything fits. But my immediate goal is for a 7. If there are WRHB for 7s on the market, I’ve never seen one.
 
Gabrielinconfident said:
No. Only one is a stack. There’s no need for 4 coils, in fact it would probably make it sound muffled and weird. What I want is to have an actual regular humbucker, but when I split it, it doesn’t hum. I only need one extra dummy coil for that. The push/pull would switch between the A2, and the dummy coils.
fetch
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This doesn't look like a practical pickup that would become a product more than one person would buy. One problem is your A5 coil and dummy coil need to be the same number of turns to hum-cancel, and your A2 coil needs to be equal to your A5 coil to hum-cancel. If your A5 is a hot single, then both your A2 and dummy have to have that same 'hot' number of turns, which begs the problem of where you are going to put the dummy coil, because it won't fit under the A2 or A5 coil, and what is all that going to sound like. I believe Duncan does stacks by using thinner wire for the hum-cancel coil to have the same number of turns and make it fit, but they are tall for singles. You'd have to shim the A2 single or have an empty stack coil underneath. Stacks have their baseplate built-in, so adding a mounting base to hold them together will make it even taller, which is not what you want at the neck. The influence of all those coils and magnets near each other may not sound like you think also.

There's also such a thing as a 3-coil dual-rail / single coil staggered pickup from China that you could just flip from one coil to the other. (This listing is sold, but the pickup exists, so you could find it somewhere.). https://reverb.com/item/49067339-black-3-coils-dual-rails-humbucker-guitar-pickup

Glastonbury Pickups already makes a triple coil. If you are already routing your guitar just for this, you could just get Glastonbury to put whatever magnets you want and plug and play with this one. https://glastonburypickups.com/home/the-triple-coil/

A similar but more lean concept is the Vox Virage 3-90

Another option is the Vox Co-Axe pickups which had the hum-cancelling wind surrounding the whole pickup. Because the area of the coil is bigger, it takes less turns.
https://www.planetz.com/vox-coaxe-interview-with-vox-rd/

If it were me, and I were spending Custom Shop money, I'd get a StagMag A2/TheMag A5 coil pack on a humbucker base plate and run it series / parallel on a switch, and I'd be able to use A2 single or A5 single off a switch also. Still unknown what an A2 + A5 coil sounds like as a humbucker, however. Could be mushy and unclear.

Personally I think really this problem has already been solved more elegantly by simply running the neck pickup in series or parallel; with series you get your humbucker, with parallel you get your single coil sound that is hum-cancelling, no additional routing and no custom pickup required. I have a feeling the original idea, while very interesting, is going to require far more R&D than anyone wants to pay for, just to get sounds that you can get other ways already.

I think your best bet is to just get an A5 stack and an A2 single and direct mount them next to each other in your guitar and try it and see what it sounds like. That would be far cheaper than naively spec'ing a pickup to the Custom Shop and hoping it works.
 
Gabrielinconfident said:
On a 7-string? Maybe if everything works out I’ll get 6-string versions for future guitars, or if we can convince SD to produce them regularly, that might be a good idea to make sure everything fits. But my immediate goal is for a 7. If there are WRHB for 7s on the market, I’ve never seen one.
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Missed that it was a 7. Best of luck on this, I'm not seeing this being the type of thing that would sell enough units to warrant regular production. Most people are fine with a PRS style tap for noiseless singles out of a humbucker config or slightly noisier fully split tones. Live, most people will never hear the difference and in the studio, it's easier to just switch instruments. That said, advances don't happen if everyone is content with the status quo.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable man persists in adapting the world to himself, therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -GB Shaw
 
I agree that series/parallel operation is a good way to obtain single coilish tones or humbucker sounds with a pickup having the proper specs : even a X2N in parallel has the same inductance than a regular Strat pickup and although its large strong magnetic fied obviously makes it bassier / louder than a SC, it's already a step in the right direction. Same thing with single coil sized rails humbuckers, if they have enough inductance to start with.

Regarding the 3 coils idea: if it was so irrelevant, I don't think that EMG would have designed the 81TW mentioned in my first answer. :-)

I'm currently working myself on a quad-coil humbucker project. LOL.



Side note about noise cancellation:

it requires the same number of turns only if the dummy coil is wound around a plastic bobbin of the same size than the single coil to "hum-buck"...

what counts is the sensivity of the noise-cancelling coil to hum.

An Ilitch coil involves only a few dozens of turns of thick wire, and cancels the hum thx to its wider area changing it in a kind of "noise antenna". 180 to 250 Ohm are enough to do that.

DiMarzio Area models host noise sensors measuring 1.2 to 1.4k, if memory serves me. Kinman mounts noise cancelling coils measuring 600 Ohm. These devices rely on ferrous parts making them as (anti-)noisy as a 6k single coil (their bobbin itself being even made of metal, laminated to avoid Foucault currents, in recent Kinman designs)...


IOW, we have at disposal many ways to obtain single coil sounds without noise, even if each solution has its own downsides. Isn't it rejoicing? :-)
 
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I don’t want two coils in parallel (i.e. position 4 on a strat), I want a noiseless single coil sound (i.e. position 5 on a strat). In fact, that’s the main neck tone I want. I’m simply exploring the possibility of also keeping the option of a regular humbucker. Simply saying “buy another guitar” is not a fair suggestion to someone who lives in Brazil, and has to deal with my currency being ⅕ of the dollar, with customs, and with unreasonable taxes. If I were to buy the guitar I want at the moment, it’d be R$8000 before taxes (which are 100%, yes, ONE HUNDRED PERCENT), whereas a custom shop pickup is, at most, R$1000. And a pickup is small enough that I can have it clear customs without any taxes at all. For reference: minimum wage is currently around R$1200/month.

I’m gonna talk to the Custom Shop soon and see what they can offer me. As I see it right now, my options are:
1) Ordering a CS stack (because for some reason no one makes stacks for 7 strings) and giving up on the humbucker option;
2) Ordering a CS stack + a CS single coil;
3) Ordering a CS stack + a regular single coil;
4) Ordering one CS 3-coil pickup, if they can fit everything on a humbucker baseplate.
 
freefrog said:
I agree that series/parallel operation is a good way to obtain single coilish tones or humbucker sounds with a pickup having the proper specs : even a X2N in parallel has the same inductance than a regular Strat pickup and although its large strong magnetic fied obviously makes it bassier / louder than a SC, it's already a step in the right direction. Same thing with single coil sized rails humbuckers, if they have enough inductance to start with.

Regarding the 3 coils idea: if it was so irrelevant, I don't think that EMG would have designed the 81TW mentioned in my first answer. :-)

I'm currently working myself on a quad-coil humbucker project. LOL.



Side note about noise cancellation:

it requires the same number of turns only if the dummy coil is wound around a plastic bobbin of the same size than the single coil to "hum-buck"...

what counts is the sensivity of the noise-cancelling coil to hum.

An Ilitch coil involves only a few dozens of turns of thick wire, and cancels the hum thx to its wider area changing it in a kind of "noise antenna". 180 to 250 Ohm are enough to do that.

DiMarzio Area models host noise sensors measuring 1.2 to 1.4k, if memory serves me. Kinman mounts noise cancelling coils measuring 600 Ohm. These devices rely on ferrous parts making them as (anti-)noisy as a 6k single coil (their bobbin itself being even made of metal, laminated to avoid Foucault currents, in recent Kinman designs)...


IOW, we have at disposal many ways to obtain single coil sounds without noise, even if each solution has its own downsides. Isn't it rejoicing? :-)
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone said a 3-coil idea was irrelevant. In fact, I proposed several different 3-coil systems that already exist (the Vox CoAxe is actually 2 coils but makes 3 sounds), all but one fit in a neck route without additional modification. For me, I simply said the proposed solution didn't look practical for a neck pickup, and it is also a very specific need that not everyone has. (How many EMG 81TWs are sold compared to the regular 81? The TW is almost a quarter of an inch thicker - if it were passive, how well could you adjust the neck height with that?) I also mentioned that Vox had the noise-cancelling coil around the main pickup, covering a larger area, requiring less turns.

The ultimate question is: will an A2 single with a dummy coil sound so uniquely different than the right model humbucker in parallel? Because that is the main difference this pickup would add. That would decide whether all that R&D to make a tri-coil bucker is worth it (because you still have to solve for an A5 stack coil sitting right next to the A2 coil, influencing the result). It would be pretty easy to test this one aspect, without routing a guitar or ordering a custom pickup, before proceeding further.

The other way it might be done off the shelf is just an A5 stack and A2 stack mounted next to each other, then split to top coils in series and flip the phase on one of them for the humbucker sound (but then, does it sound like any neck humbucker you want to use? That needs to be tested also, and could be tested with two stacks, first, without building a custom pickup.). I'm just saying what seems more practical to solve the problem; not what is "better" or a 'better idea' or more relevant, etc. Why go through the expense of spec'ing a custom pickup when you aren't sure it will solve the problem yet? Most inventions are prototyped and tested before they are actually built.
 
Gabrielinconfident said:
I don’t want two coils in parallel (i.e. position 4 on a strat),
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A regular humbucker with parallel coils is not the same as position 4 on a Strat. For one, the coils aren't separated by several inches causing the frequency cancellations that get a 'quack' type of sound, in a humbucker the coils are right next to each other and sound more like a single coil.

You said, "What I want is to have an actual regular humbucker, but when I split it, it doesn’t hum"

But now you are saying, "I want a noiseless single coil sound (i.e. position 5 on a strat). In fact, that’s the main neck tone I want. I’m simply exploring the possibility of also keeping the option of a regular humbucker"

Those are very different goals and would hint at different pickup solutions.
 
beaubrummels said:
The ultimate question is: will an A2 single with a dummy coil sound so uniquely different than the right model humbucker in parallel?
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Yes. I’ve experimented with mixing different magnets in the same pickup, and so has SD (Custom/59 hybrid, 5-2 strat, etc). It gives VERY interesting results. Also, having a humbucker wired in parallel has a completely different sound from a stack in series. Like, not even close.

beaubrummels said:
The other way it might be done off the shelf is just an A5 stack and A2 stack mounted next to each other, then split to top coils in series and flip the phase on one of them for the humbucker sound
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Again, it’s a 7-string guitar, and I couldn’t find ANY stock 7S stacks. Even if I did prototype this idea, it’d still have to be two custom shop pickups. Otherwise, I’d have to prototype it on a 6-string, which is not the guitar I want to mess around with right now.
 
beaubrummels said:
Those are very different goals and would hint at different pickup solutions.
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How are those different goals?! A split humbucker doesn’t sound anything like a humbucker in parallel. When two coils are in parallel, there’s a lot of frequency cancellation and addition between them, resulting in a very scooped tone with tons of presence. Sure, it’s not exactly the same as pos 4, but it’s definitely closer to that than to pos 5, which still has quite a bit of midrange and a bell-like tone.

Let me put it in the clearest way possible: I want two options of neck tone on the same guitar, one is strat position 5, the other is les paul neck humbucker, both hum-free.
 
Gabrielinconfident said:
Yes. I’ve experimented with mixing different magnets in the same pickup, and so has SD (Custom/59 hybrid, 5-2 strat, etc). It gives VERY interesting results. Also, having a humbucker wired in parallel has a completely different sound from a stack in series. Like, not even close.


Again, it’s a 7-string guitar, and I couldn’t find ANY stock 7S stacks. Even if I did prototype this idea, it’d still have to be two custom shop pickups. Otherwise, I’d have to prototype it on a 6-string, which is not the guitar I want to mess around with right now.
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You're conflating different things that are not comparable.

The 59/Custom Hybrid doesn't mix magnets. It's just an A5 magnet but has coils from two different pickups.

Putting the top coils of two stacks in series with the phase of one reversed would be simulating (or actually be) a humbucker. A humbucker with coils in parallel would be simulating a single coil. These are two different things, so of course they sound different. The question was does an A2 stack by itself (not stacks in series) sound significantly different from the right model humbucker with coils in parallel (like an A2 humbucker, or StagMag).
 
Gabrielinconfident said:
How are those different goals?! A split humbucker doesn’t sound anything like a humbucker in parallel. When two coils are in parallel, there’s a lot of frequency cancellation and addition between them, resulting in a very scooped tone with tons of presence. Sure, it’s not exactly the same as pos 4, but it’s definitely closer to that than to pos 5, which still has quite a bit of midrange and a bell-like tone.

Let me put it in the clearest way possible: I want two options of neck tone on the same guitar, one is strat position 5, the other is les paul neck humbucker, both hum-free.
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Goal 1 "What I want is to have an actual regular humbucker, but when I split it, it doesn’t hum"

Goal 2 "I want a noiseless single coil sound (i.e. position 5 on a strat). In fact, that’s the main neck tone I want. "

A split humbucker that doesn't hum is different from a noiseless single coil.

Your last sentence makes more sense. But you are probably going to have to compromise on one tone or the other. Or just have a neck StagMag wound and use a dummy coil for splits.
 
beaubrummels said:
[...] Most inventions are prototyped and tested before they are actually built.
Click to expand...

I was toying with a prototype of humbucker not later than yesterday... ;-)

... but it's already dismantled: it's not that easy to find something meriting to be built. <:0)

Now, these last decades I've also and more than once contributed to correct commercial products whose designers had apparently botched their initial prototypes... :-P


That being said and since you replied to my previous post: I was not suggesting that you had said that... Etc. I was mainly expressing MY own tendency to stay open to various ideas without hierarchizing 'em (the "LOL" in my previous message inviting to take it as light-hearted rather than argumentative). :-)
 
beaubrummels said:
Goal 2 "I want a noiseless single coil sound (i.e. position 5 on a strat). In fact, that’s the main neck tone I want. "
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Which is why I my initial idea was to pair a stack with a single coil, and my initial question was “can I wire them in such a way that it sounds like a humbucker?”

Honestly, having it all fit into a humbucker baseplate would be an advantage because I’d be ordering one pickup instead of two (which might be cheaper), and it’d be more aesthetically pleasing. But to your point that I’ll have to compromise on one of the tones, refer back to the original post where I have a fully functioning stack, and a macgyvered single coil stuck next to it, and I think my priorities are clear.
 
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