justFred
Well-known member
Anyone have any guesses?
What is the secret of John Mayer’s ‘64 Strat bass pickup?
- Thread starter justFred
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freefrog
Well-known member
Pre-CBS pickups were rather inconsistent... Not only polarity changed from North to South in 1959 / coils did evolve from hand wound formvar insulated wire to machine wound PE insulated wire in 1964 or 1965 / number of turns + actual diameter of wire + measured DCR changed along the years... but one can find sometimes noticeably different pickups in a single vintage Strat and the specs measured in such cases don't always appear as understandable. I've yet to explain what a magnetometer and a LRC meter measure on the neck PU of a L Series Strat that I've periodically in maintenance, for instance. Its rod magnets seem to be made of an "hybrid" alloy giving an inductance to DCR ratio that I've never noticed on any other single coil.
And these ol' things seem to age randomly. See what Kinman said about aged formvar, for example (with a 1964 pickup which is precisely of the same era than the PU's in Mayer's Strat): https://kinman.com/agedsound.php
Anyway: what the Guitarworld article tells about 6dB more in the bass and 6dB less in the harsh high frequencies seems to presuppose a very low "Q factor" for the pickup(s) involved. IOW: a flatter response than usual (a broader and squashed resonant peak). Such would be the effect of a diminished resistive load and it might explain why PRS appears to mount resistors and/or capacitors between hot and ground of Silver Sky single coils:
To me, these added components look as a way to mimic the effects of... aged formvar as Kinman explains it.
Now, a resistive load is a resistive load so turning down the tone control of a Strat pickup while setting it closer to the strings might have largely the same effect. Not sure all of this can be described as a "secret"... ;-)
And these ol' things seem to age randomly. See what Kinman said about aged formvar, for example (with a 1964 pickup which is precisely of the same era than the PU's in Mayer's Strat): https://kinman.com/agedsound.php
Anyway: what the Guitarworld article tells about 6dB more in the bass and 6dB less in the harsh high frequencies seems to presuppose a very low "Q factor" for the pickup(s) involved. IOW: a flatter response than usual (a broader and squashed resonant peak). Such would be the effect of a diminished resistive load and it might explain why PRS appears to mount resistors and/or capacitors between hot and ground of Silver Sky single coils:
To me, these added components look as a way to mimic the effects of... aged formvar as Kinman explains it.
Now, a resistive load is a resistive load so turning down the tone control of a Strat pickup while setting it closer to the strings might have largely the same effect. Not sure all of this can be described as a "secret"... ;-)
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