Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

[Npinedo13]

Schecter omen extreme 6 stringthrough mohogany body with maple cap, 25.5 scale length:
500k pots
.022 cap
2 vol 1 tone
Black winter bridge
Sentient neck
I find the black winter to have awesome power but it's just a bit abrasive (too much bite) I play mostly metal and hard rock through this guy and its usually in D standard or drop C. I'm debating on possibly lowering the pot value, but I'm hoping that switching to 2 tones 1 volume with a .047 cap on the bridge with do the trick. Any input on this from anyone with more experience in pot/cap switching?

 

[weepingminotaur]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

Schecter omen extreme 6 stringthrough mohogany body with maple cap, 25.5 scale length:
500k pots
.022 cap
2 vol 1 tone
Black winter bridge
Sentient neck
I find the black winter to have awesome power but it's just a bit abrasive (too much bite) I play mostly metal and hard rock through this guy and its usually in D standard or drop C. I'm debating on possibly lowering the pot value, but I'm hoping that switching to 2 tones 1 volume with a .047 cap on the bridge with do the trick. Any input on this from anyone with more experience in pot/cap switching?

By no means am I an expert here, but my first thought would be to lower the pickup height and fiddle with the pole pieces until you find the right tone for you with the right amount of bite. I found my Winter bridge to be a bit too much until I adjusted pickup and pole piece height.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

You can also rewire the tone knob just for the bridge, and keep it down at 7 or 8.

 

[shadowfire90]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

Try pure nickel strings. Just about every brand makes them. I was surprised how few people knew they exist and it helped out my warlock big time as the pickups about as hot as the black winter. Or perhaps a thicker than usual pick. I go between 0.88mm to 1.5mm myself for different sounds. Some materials work better than others for it. I used to feel weird about using such thick picks but now I'm seeing people use 2-3mm so it's all good.

pure nickel strings have a higher tension so if you use 10-46 try 9-42 for instance. It's really uncommon to see anything above 11-50 area

replace a single volume or tone pot associated with the bridge pickup with 250k. This would lower the resonant peak of the guitar pickup in the selection. The Seymour Duncan JB is famous for people doing this to it to make it sound better to their ears.

The only way I'd swap out the main tone capacitor is if the entire guitar is too bright. Which doesn't sound like the case. I'd switch out the 0.022uf (22nf) capacitor for a 0.047uf (47nf). The most a passive guitar usually can get away with is 0.1uf (100nf). At 10 where we think its off the difference will be a difference but unless you jump to an extreme it'll be negligible.

wiring mod wise try filtering out some of the output of the pickup with a low valued tone capacitor. A cheap polyester capacitor will do the trick between 10, 15 to 22nf as a starting point. Pickup height makes a big difference but the capacitor trick is a great excuse if you're like me and you don't throw cheap capacitors out. The only bad capacitors are ceramic which you almost never see.

another which may help is the fender grease bucket tone control. Youtube this one to see if it's worth it.

I'm sure someone will mention replacing the highly charged ceramic magnets as there is 3 in the black winter with alnico II or V magnets which seems more like something I'd ask the custom shop. I love ceramic magnets and there's nothing wrong with them especially for metal. What would we call this guys. White winter in the custom shop haha.

this is how you filter a pickups output
View attachment 101586

 

[Demanic]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

I can't imagine wanting to tame a Black Winter.
However the above suggestions are all good.
Try the cheapest first: roll back the tone knob.

Sent from my Alcatel_5044C using Tapatalk

 

[Npinedo13]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

I've had moderate success with tone knob and pole height tinkering, and am still getting pretty good tone. And maybe it is just a matter of more tinkering, however if I did mess with the cap value I'd be switching to a one vol two tone setup to retain the brighter tone from the .022 on the sentient and only switch the BW to a 47 cap. I'd like to keep it set up with 500k just to keep the "range" from the controls, but the 250 on the bridge pos could work too. All sound like thoughtful responses and some possibilities are stacking up here.

 

[Demanic]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

How often do you use both pickups together?

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[Npinedo13]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

Very little, mostly when I'm looking for a good balanced clean tone, which for the music this guitar is used for isn't very often.

 

[Demanic]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

Ok, like I said a while ago, just roll back the tone knob.

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[orpheo]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

Ok, like I said a while ago, just roll back the tone knob.

Sent from my Alcatel_5044C using Tapatalk

To me, that's like saying that you've got an ache in your leg and the doctor just cuts off the limb entirely. See, no more leg that can hurt!

The black winter isn't an easy pickup to mod, to be honest, because of the double thick ceramic magnet underneath, plus the two side-magnets. Only a 250k pot will help you tame some highs, or pull out the two side magnets (and create an SH6 in the process).

 

[Clint 55]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

You can roll back highs on it by adding a resistor to it or by changing your volume or tone and cap. Or to change the sound, you could put a double thick A5 or A8 in the middle and leave the ceramic side mags for a half change. Or only use an alnico in the center for a more drastic change.

 

[Demanic]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

Rolling back the tone knob a bit is like amputating a limb?

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[Hammerheart]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

This is actually very similar to the topic I just joined up to post about.

I have a set of black winters in my Ibanez RGA and they sound absolutely fantastic in this guitar (mahogany body, bolt on neck). I thought it might be an idea to try them out in my LTD EC1000 as I'm really bored of the EMGs that are in it. As I didn't wan to commit to ripping out the electrics in that guitar just yet, I wired them in direct on the jack to try them out. Having loved them so much in the Ibanez I was shocked how much I hated them in the EC1000. When played unplugged this guitar is quite bright/jangly/twangy and these pickups just seem to amplify that tenfold. They sound horrific. I was going to come to the forum to ask if this is just due to the fact I have no volume or tone pots in the circuit or if they are just unsuited to this guitar. Everything I love about them in the Ibanez sounds awful in the EC1000.

 

[Masta' C]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

Rolling off the tone knob is not anything like cutting off a limb. Unless your tone pot is bad, then it might be, LOL!

 

[weepingminotaur]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

I would argue that using the tone knob for the Winter is the opposite of losing a limb. It's like gaining a third arm that, combined with your regular arms, will allow you to crush all in your path, like the mutant guitar player you are!

Seriously, though, the Winter is wonderfully responsive to playing with the tone knob, and will sound like itself even if you're at 7 or 8 or whatever on the dial. I usually keep it around 6 for rhythm and then dime it for lead playing.

 

[LesPaulPlayer001]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

Lower it. This will reduce the output of the pickup and take off a little bit of high end.

 

[Npinedo13]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

After a little while longer tinkering with the pole and pickup height I've got a tone that I really like, but with the shared tone knob I'm gonna be rolling it between dimed out on the neck and rolled to my "sweet spot" for the bridge. So I'm thinking that the 2 tone 1 volume setup will suit me better as I mess with the volume much less. The pots are alpha, but perhaps the cap could use an upgrade. I'll probably just wire up the new config. (2 tone, 1 vol) and try out both the 22 and 47 caps on the bridge. Itll probably be a while to get the parts delivered and some time set aside for guitar surgery, but I'll update back after it's all said and done. ��������

 

[jeremy]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

on my guitars with three controls i usually take the tone control off the neck pup so i have neck volume, bridge volume, bridge tone. gives a little more openness to the neck and lets me dial the bridge where i want it

 

[OLDERBUDWISER]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

Schecter omen extreme 6 stringthrough mohogany body with maple cap, 25.5 scale length:
500k pots
.022 cap
2 vol 1 tone
Black winter bridge
Sentient neck
I find the black winter to have awesome power but it's just a bit abrasive (too much bite) I play mostly metal and hard rock through this guy and its usually in D standard or drop C. I'm debating on possibly lowering the pot value, but I'm hoping that switching to 2 tones 1 volume with a .047 cap on the bridge with do the trick. Any input on this from anyone with more experience in pot/cap switching?

Just rip it out, why fight a battle with a pickup that needs so much to make it good? Harsh is the word, its nasty but not good nasty IMO

 

[freefrog]

Re: Tips for taming a Black Winter bridge

After a little while longer tinkering with the pole and pickup height I've got a tone that I really like, but with the shared tone knob I'm gonna be rolling it between dimed out on the neck and rolled to my "sweet spot" for the bridge. So I'm thinking that the 2 tone 1 volume setup will suit me better as I mess with the volume much less. The pots are alpha, but perhaps the cap could use an upgrade. I'll probably just wire up the new config. (2 tone, 1 vol) and try out both the 22 and 47 caps on the bridge. Itll probably be a while to get the parts delivered and some time set aside for guitar surgery, but I'll update back after it's all said and done. ��������

Late to the party but...

1-a sober way to do what you want would be to do what Clint 55 said: put a resistor in parallel with the bridge pickup. It will act exactly like the tone pot when you lower it (since an average tone pot doesn"t involve the tone cap before to reach 3/10... Between 10/10 and 3.5 /10, its action is essentially resistive).

To know what is the proper value, measure your current tone pot when it's lowered to suit your taste: put the probes of your meter between the lug receiving the signal and the one going to the cap...
If you find that your "sweet spot" is with the tone pot @ 175k (arbitrary value out of my head), all you have to do is to put a 270k in parallel with the bridge pickup (between its hot and ground).

Useful tool: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/tools/parallel-resistance-calculator/


2-If ever you dislike how the added resistor interacts with your volume pot, you may try a LOW value capacitor between the hot and ground of your bridge pickup. it will mimic how a longer guitar cable shifts down the high mids and sweetens the high range with passive pickups ( https://www.google.com/search?clien...hUKEwidydjrx7HlAhVJzYUKHRCRCzMQ4dUDCAo&uact=5
BTW, the first Google answer talking about 30 picofarad per foot is a bit low... A cable with its two jack plugs is generally a bit more capacitive than this; 147pF per meter / 44.81 pF per foot according to my archives, based on measurements with dozens of standard coax cables).

If you like how 6m of added cable shift down the high mids and sweetens the high range, try a +/- 900pF cap between the hot and ground of your pickup. If the equivalent of 4m of cable is enough, try a value close to 600pF. An so on...


Some other solutions, for the record...

3-If you wanted less power, you might try a LR filter : an inductor (like a coil coming from a dead pickup) in series with a resistor and the whole network in parallel with the pickup to tame... it would lower its inductance and make it less loud / brighter. This trick can be combined with the "low value parallel cap trick" explained above.

4-If you wanted to tame the bass range, you would put the pickup in series with a cap, as mentioned by one of our fellow members above... but you'd have to wire the tone pot BEFORE any series cap, because the other way (series cap then tone pot) would make the tone pot react like a volume control...

Yada yada and YMMV. !-))

Anyway and IOW, there's many ways to use cheap passive components to "tune" the tone, roundness and output level of passive pickups (by modifying their resonant frequency and Q factor).

So, you don't have to put a second tone pot unless you really want it.

FWIW - I'm just trying to help and not to knock out anybody with my rambling. LOL.

Last useful tool: http://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/3627/guitarfreak-guitar-frequency-response-calculator

This excel file is a work of genius for those who want to tinker virtually with passive pickups electronics.