Single Coil Variations

[justFred]

Easy fix would be pickup a set of Guitar Madness 62’z, $30-$40 on eBay. A5 magnets. Swapped them out for my nephew who had an old Affinity Strat, plays nicely but sound thin. He’s coming along as a player so figured improving the sound might keep him going. They sound way better and for the price is a real bargain.

 

[ehdwuld]

Easy fix would be pickup a set of Guitar Madness 62’z, $30-$40 on eBay. A5 magnets. Swapped them out for my nephew who had an old Affinity Strat, plays nicely but sound thin. He’s coming along as a player so figured improving the sound might keep him going. They sound way better and for the price is a real bargain.

Aren't those the staggered A5s

I was just looking at a set of musiclilly flat A5s .
A set of 3 for $25
5-6k neck and middle 50mm spacing
6-7k for the bridge with 52mm spacing
Reverse middle

They have a staggered set with the same specs for $33

I do think I want alnico poles though
And replaced the slugs and ceramic

I got some neo magnets a while back
That are 6mm diameter disc's about 3 mm thick

I planned to hot glue them to the bottom of the slugs on a Squire set

But never got around to it

 

[Mincer]

I really like the Five Two, with its A2 on the high strings and A5 on the low. That seems to be the magic recipe for me. I'd like them even better if they were noiseless, but they are still a fine set.

 

[freefrog]

I used to have a DiMarzio SDS1 in the neck position of my old Road Worn Partscaster. It was alright if what you want is non-traditional Strat sound that still sounds unmistably single coil, but I personally didn't find it was amazing. I suppose part of why I didn't like it was becauase it's advertised as being P90-ish, hot, and beefy, but I didn't find any of thsoe statements to hold true, but YMMV.

What such hot Strat PU's have in common with P90's is the inductance. But coil geometry, Q factor and shape of magnetic field are not there, of course.


As a general side note to my new rambling about cable capacitance and inductance : the thing with classic Strat pickups is exactly the same than with original Gibson humbuckers before the birth of boutique brands... All these passive PU's make sense in context.

Underwound CBS Strat single coils are from the same era than T-Tops. Superficially, one might think that Fender CBS and Gibson Norlin were just trying to save money on wire because sales were increasing. It's probably true to some extent but if it ruined the sound, people would have totally stopped to buy Fender and Gibson guitars. They kept buying these instruments and even liked them because they were plugging to big bassy amps through pedals with a poor input impedance + super long and/or coily capacitive cables.

Some pickup designs just give a similar tone without the cumbersome necessity of a Vox wah to flatten the response + twice 25' of wire to shift the resonant frequency. What is needed for that is just a single coil with a lower Q factor + higher inductance (like models with slugs + ceramic magnets underneath).

But the sound of a classic Strat PU can still be tuned by modifying C and R specs. The following difference, for instance, would just require a 3,3nF from hot to ground instead of 75' of added cable...

Lowering the Q factor by using the tone control would make the first of these two tones closer to the response of a P90, minus the output level of course (and without cancelling the difference due to Fender vs Gibson scales + pickup positions, obviously)...

 

[Chistopher]

I really like the Five Two, with its A2 on the high strings and A5 on the low. That seems to be the magic recipe for me. I'd like them even better if they were noiseless, but they are still a fine set.

The CS makes noiseless 5-2s

 

[Mincer]

The CS makes noiseless 5-2s

Indeed, though I haven't tried them yet.

 

[freefrog]

BTW, a good way to compare passive pickups is to evaluate their harmonic richness.

Pluck consistently a normally tuned high E string @ the 19th or 20th fret. It should produce a frequency around 1khz. Record it direct to the board. Then count the harmonics.

Weither they are single coils or humbuckers, really good pickups produce 12 harmonics or more above the fundamental note.

Below is a comparison between a generic single coil with steel poles + ceramic bar (in orange) and an excellent hand wound Strat SC, with AlNiCo rods (in blue. I say "excellent" because it's one of the rare models that I've found as harmonically rich as the stock pickups of a real L Series 1962 Strat)...

 

[ehdwuld]

The CS makes noiseless 5-2s

So now I'm thinking

If i get a set of A2 flat poles
And a set of A5 flat poles
Then exchange the poles a bit

I can have two bootleg 5-2 sets

 

[switchman]

In Area's, signal coil and bottom noise cancelling bobbin are asymetrical. This mismatching causes a comb filtering effect present with most stack pickups but in this case, unpleasingly focused in the high harmonics. DiMarzio has tried to minimize this side effect by using a shield between coils but it doesn't suffice to give a natural high end roll off.

...not to divert the topic too much but do you have one of your spectrum analysis for the Areas? I had the 58/67/61 set in house for a while but didn't have another strat to compare side by side. I thought they sounded a little "off" I couldn't put into words other than a little thin or raspy. Okay for some styles for the sake of humbucking but I maybe not others.

 

[Chistopher]

While I'm here, are the SSl1, 5-2, and A2P the same wind?

 

[freefrog]

...not to divert the topic too much but do you have one of your spectrum analysis for the Areas? I had the 58/67/61 set in house for a while but didn't have another strat to compare side by side. I thought they sounded a little "off" I couldn't put into words other than a little thin or raspy. Okay for some styles for the sake of humbucking but I maybe not others.

Below is the raw electrically induced response of a DM Area VS a traditional bridge Strat PU, on a linear scale. Vertical steps of 3dB.

 

[GuitarStv]

While a lot of my playing is sparkly clean, I find that pickup differences are easiest to hear when playing with medium to higher gain. Maybe it's the compression that showcases the variation in frequencies?

 

[ehdwuld]

While a lot of my playing is sparkly clean, I find that pickup differences are easiest to hear when playing with medium to higher gain. Maybe it's the compression that showcases the variation in frequencies?

This may be why they all sound so similar to me. I use little to no gain at all when listening to pickups

 

[Chistopher]

While a lot of my playing is sparkly clean, I find that pickup differences are easiest to hear when playing with medium to higher gain. Maybe it's the compression that showcases the variation in frequencies?

The higher the gain, the more your pickup is going to sound like the EQ curve of the gain stage

 

[ehdwuld]

My plan formulated in post #28 has been foiled

While I can find flat A5 pickups
I can only find staggered A2 pickups

Alternatively
I have found a manufacturer who will make me a 5-2 set and ship them with black, cream, and white covers
But not flat

Also will make me a set of stacked A5 pickups with the collection of covers.

Thinking,
Can I settle for staggered 5-2

Or splurge on a custom shop flat 5-2 noiseless set.


Ummmmmmm

 

[GuitarStv]

The higher the gain, the more your pickup is going to sound like the EQ curve of the gain stage

That's definately a thing that happens when you push too much or if the pedal has a very pronounced EQ. (I'm lookin' at you Big Muff . . . where every pickup kinda sounds like a big muff.) There's a sweet spot though where the sound is saturated and compressed, but hasn't completely overridden the sound of the pickup - this is where I find it easiest to hear pickup differences. Like they jump right out at you.

 

[switchman]

Below is the raw electrically induced response of a DM Area VS a traditional bridge Strat PU, on a linear scale. Vertical steps of 3dB.

Thanks..it helps me when there's data to support what I think I'm hearing. Cheers