Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

[aleclee]

Re: Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

This brings up a question that I've asked before - just because one aspect of a guitar transmits more vibrations into a part or system, does it necessarily equate to an "improvement" in tone. Couldn't it just as easily cause standing waves and cancellation? I would think that each case would stand on its own. Maybe.

Same could be said of a lot of alleged improvements. More is not always better.

 

[Kosh Naranek]

Re: Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

What about direct mount into a Strat, compared to the mounting on the plastic material of the pickguard?

I've noticed a difference in tone between these guitars:

and

Both have the SSL-5 Duncan Custom single at the bridge. I prefe the sound of the guitar with the pickups mounted direct to that of the one with the pickguard. Of course the one with the pickguard has an alder body, while the other one is solid flamed maple, so that is a factor too.

The Ernie Ball Music Man Van Halen signature guitar (now the Axis), introduced in the early 90's, was the first production guitar I know of that featured pickups mounted directly to the body. After the Van Halen model was introduced, I noticed a lot of guitar companies jumping on the direct mount bandwagon.
Mounting the pickups directly was specially requested by Van Halen on his EB/MM model. And yes, he said you get audibly better tone with the pickups mounted direct.

So we have Van Halen to thank for guitars with direct mounted pickups.

 

[Kosh Naranek]

Re: Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

I should also add, in addition to the sunburst guitar pictured above, I have two other guitars with bridge humbuckers mounted direct to the body. One sounds great, though I replaced the factory JB with a PA-TB3 to get that to happen. The other has a 59 at the bridge, and I think it sounds rather anemic, and am looking around at what pickup I can put in there to give it a little beefier sound.

So mounting pickups direct is not a sure fire recipe for great tone.

 

[Gr8Scott]

Re: Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

If the pickup is direct mounted and is a bit microphonic, would that basically mean more sound from the guitar reaching the wires or less? Seems to me that you would get more of a signal and more of the actual sound of the guitar that way than other ways of mounting the pickups. I can see how phase cancellation could be a factor, but not much more so than using different speakers in a cabinet can also be a factor. Seems to make sense that it would have good and bad sides to it. One would think that directly mounting to the wood itself would create a more mid-rangey tone and give the guitar a touch more punch. I could be wrong of course...

 

[Philcguitars]

Re: Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

Ed Roman is very oppinionated on this [and other subjects] have a look at his arguments for direct coupling on his site. It will either sway you or not! Of course as already stated Eddie Van Halen is a fan of this.

 

[jmh151]

Re: Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

I noticed a 100% improvement when I direct mounted an EMG 81 in the bridge position of an alder bodied 1986 Squier Strat. I put hardwood shims under the pickup for height, then screwed the pickup directly into the body. In this case, the EMG was able to pick up the vibrations of the body and, and gave it a fuller, more agressive tone.... I tried this with other passive pickups, and I never got the same response.

Run a screwdriver or paper clip over an EMG- you'll hear it loudly through the amp. Try the same with a passive pickup- you'll hear it if you touch the pole pieces, but you won't hear much if you tough the bobbins themselves.

I tried direct mounting the EMG the same way on a basswood bodied Ibanez and didn't get the same response either...

Basically there's alot of factors involved, but the only pickup that I heard a clear difference in direct mounting was the EMG

 

[fingerace]

Re: Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

I don't think there is a signifigant difference in tone. The thing that might change is the feedback from a microphonic pup.

My pups were so microphonic that if I sang with my mouth near them, I could hear myself from the amp. If they were mounted on the body, I think more feedback would have been created due to more vibrations going to the pups when playing the guitar, making the guitar useless. As Artietoo and aleclee said, more vibrations in the pups isn't a good thing most probably...

 

[Kosh Naranek]

Re: Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

Guitar pickups do not pick up vibrations from the guitar's body. What little sonic difference direct mounting makes, it's not becasue of that.

If anything, if the body is resonating, it would cause the pickup to resonate with it, in effect putting it in motion (very small motions) with relation to the strings.

If the pickup is stationary, as it would be if mounted to a very rigid, solid, non-vibrating object, it theoretically would sense only the vibration of the string above it.

If the pickup itself is vibrating slightly, it is in effect moving with relation to the string above it, and the signal it will produce will be the sum of the string's vibration and it's own, which may be out of phase or in phase with the string. That may slightly increase or decrease the overall output, or emphasize or de-emphasize certain harmonics.

Les Paul has talked in interviews about how his idea for a solidbody guitar was ridiculed at first. But his reason for making the body solid was pretty much what I was describing above. He realized that on a hollow body guitar, the pickup is actually in motion because it is being vibrated along with the top of the guitar it's mounted to. He sought to get a truer signal from the pickup by mounting it to a more rigid, solid structure. While mounting it to a solid body decreases the vibrating of the pickup ( a solidbody obviously sounds different than a hollowbody electric), the body of a solidbody guitar will still resonate, and that's not necessarily undesireable to many guitarists.

 

[SoundAt11]

Re: Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

You guys would hate me, then. On my guitar, that I built from scratch, I routed for direct-mount humbuckers with the baseplates flush against the body wood. I drilled out holes for the pole pieces to sit through. It's extremely labor intensive.

As for tone, as I've never had rings on that specific guitar, I can't do a true A/B comparison. I can say, that tone is more dependant on the wood than any other guitar I've tried (that all have pickguard or ring-mounted pickups).
Also, you can knock on the body wood and feel the vibrations through the pickup (more in the neck, than in the bridge).
As far as tone, there's plenty of sustain and the guitar has more of a 3D quality.
I'm not a sound engineer or anything, but technically, it _makes sense_ to me to bolt the pickups directly to wood if you're building a guitar from scratch. Do a lot of measuring and put a slight angle in your cavities and you won't need the adjustments of springs and screws.

On my old SG, I took off the rings and bolted the humbuckers directly to the bottoms of the cavities. They sounded a lot louder and thicker. This is true A/B, as I'd had a Duncan Custom in there before and after.

my 2 cents.....

 

[SoundAt11]

Re: Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

Oh, and you don't have to drill out the screw holes.
I use the screws from a dead humbucker to attach the pickups to the body; they fit in the factory baseplate holes just fine. I suppose you could use bigger screws and get more of an affect, but I'd hate to ruin the resale value of my pickups. Small screws will work just fine.

 

[Kivitel]

Re: Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

I think the best explanation I have heard for the difference is this - mounting the (relatively dense, heavy) pickup to the center of the guitar body effectively changes the mass and distribution of mass in the body. Since the pickup area is now heavier (and more rigidly coupled to the wood) it will tend to make the guitar less responsive and crispy crackly, but more powerful. Like using bigger strings - it takes more to put them in motion, but then they stay in motion longer. Acoustic guitar bridges are a good example of this principle - while most of the time you want a soundboard to be as light as possible, a little added mass in the center can improve tone.

The interaction of vibrations from the strings-wood-pickguard-pickup interacting with strings is unlikely to be noticeable. The guitar puts out a huge amount of overtones and frequencies at all times, and the wood affects them in it's own way. I think the more mundane explanation makes more sense. If the string vibration was interacting with the pickup in relation to the string (a sort of feedback loop) the guitar would probably sound woodier and more hollow as this is exactly what happens with hollow bodies as pointed out above. The idea of decoupling the pickup with springs and plastic, and attaching that to a rigid, massive piece of wood does make a lot of sense.

I could see a too-sterile sounding guitar needing some more woodiness, maybe a direct mount could help. Similarly, maybe a direct mounted pickup in a guitar that is a bit too tubby, cloudy and hollow sounding should be placed in a pickguard.

What I love about strats and teles is that they have such a great balance of singing pure tones with woody tones WITH, zingly metallic tones.

 

[revolution]

Re: Mounting pickup direct to body: what does this do to tone?

It totally darkened up the sound of my Les Paul. I had to go back to the mounting rings because it was too much. I prefer to mount the p'up directly to the wood of my 89 Fender HM Strat. I use old Ibanez Super 70s so I can afford the extra low boost in that one...but the Les Paul? WAY too much WOOF! with the p'up mounted into the body. It absolutely makes a difference.