Re: Next forum pickup design (2014)
#2:
This is a much more untested idea, but I would really like to see a split style guitar pickup like a Precision bass pickup. In a humbucker casing. G&L puts that design into the commanche and some Tele clone but those are not interchangeable with normal pickups.
I think that this could be an excellent approach toward a neck pickup for a Les Paul that is not boomy, has the single pickup point thing with less cancellations but still has a lot more meat than putting a Stratocaster pickup into a humbucker casing. Not to mention it cancels hum.
No, I believe that under the hood this has two regular width coils. What I'm thinking of is a pair of short coils.
You just described the Fralin Twangmaster. His P-92 is similar too, but wound more like a P90. The Twangmaster is a true split single coil in a humbucker case.
I like this idea, my only issue being that humbuckers tend to cancel out some frequencies vs. single coils, even if you're doing a 3+3 humbucker like the z-coils mentioned earlier.
I'd really like to see something like the wide range humbucker, but with a tapped neck coil so you can get true single coil sounds too. Because the Strabro 90 does both my favorite single coil sound, and my favorite p-90 sound, I feel like the 3-screw + 3 slug coil could work really well.
So, you'd have a total of 6 alnico slugs, and a bar magnet - the slugs would influence the sound more I would think, being closer to the strings and all, so you would probably have the 3 slugs on the neck coil on the treble side, and on the bridge coil on the bass side, if that makes any sense.
For good measure I'd also wind it with a decent disparity between the coils, so you could get:
- Series (neck coil tapped)- very clear yet full and sing-y humbucker sound (kind of like a cross between a seth lover and a jazz)
- Series (full neck coil) - with the wider disparity between the coils, this would be like a massive single coil - almost p-90 combination of girth and clarity.
- Parallel (neck coil tapped)- kind of like a covered tele neck single coil, very clear yet with less presence than a strat single
- Parallel (full neck coil) - Maybe this would be closer to a p-90 than series? I'm not sure.
- Split (full neck coil) - Strat single sound, kind of like the strabro 90 but lower output
It would be kind of like the everything 'bucker - a single pickup that you could get any sound from. I have a ghetto-modified sh-55 and I can say that with A3 pole pieces on the bass strings and an a2 bar magnet, the series, split, and parallel sounds are on point. All I have left to do is to get some 42 awg wire and wind the slug coil to capacity to see what the other 3 sounds would be like.
As I tend to favor lower-output pickups, I feel like you could do the whole thing with 42 awg and still get great results.
nder:
