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Pickup selection help?


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Flame maple over Alder.

HSS.

Bright. very bright. Not looking to change it into another guitar (Izsa Strat). Just maximize what's there.

Not looking to play with a lot of gain, if at all.

What do you recommend, or have used in the past, to tame the screeching banshee? Make it pretty and seductive?

TIA, J.

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I had a super-bright maple on alder SSS that went through three sets of pickups before I found something that didn't dull the sparkle, but tamed the shrill top end. I was shocked to find SD Quarter Pounders sounded perfect in it. Can't recommend a complimentary hb for the bridge, but they worked well as an SSS set for an exceptionally bright strat.

But Josh G should be able to wind you perfect a set with the description you posted and a little more info.

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Jim, definitely contact Josh. He will absolutely pull the best out of your guitar that it has to offer.

....and I'm not even a paid shill.

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Just a question from the current owner of likely the most maligned (well, at least as far as being too bright) guitar in the history of the HFC

What tone cap is in there? 

Seriously.

Tone cap matters, even when the control is wide open.

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Another vote for Josh @JGravelin

He’ll wind you the perfect pickups for whatever your needs. I just ordered another pickup from him this weekend for a project I’ve got going. 

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Hopefully the pots are already 250k... 500k is noticeably brighter. I think it’s crucial that the humbucker be splittable via 4 conductors & the middle pickup be RWRP for HSS guitars.... a 5 way switch yielding: 1-full humbucker, 2-split humbucker + middle, 3-middle, 4-middle + neck and 5-neck containing a total of (3) hum cancelling positions... no push pull pot needed because who wants to hear a split humbucker in the bridge anyway?

The only option is a custom design or a boutique offering since ALL of the mass produced low output vintage humbuckers and single coils are bright as shit.

You want a high inductance for a dark pickup... that’s usually achieved through lots of winds creating a “hot” pickup in the process... the key is selecting the proper wire coating and sticking with a medium output. A hybrid coil design can also yield a darker than average pickup via pleasant and toneful comb filtering.

Someone like Josh could do this... Maricela Juarez and Seymour’s son can do it also but... they are all but closed during this pandemic. Josh however, is open for biz and perfectly capable for this job.

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I'm happy to help with pickups of course but before you go spending large monies, have you experimented with using a resistor on the volume controls yet? Most H/S/S guitars use 500k pots and if yours does too, adding a 1meg resistor to tab 1 and 3 (grounded to casing) will give you 242k, make your single coils sound right, and will knock down the icepick treble overall. Cost? Hit up a local electronics repair shop and I bet they'll sell you one for .10.

Or, swap to 300k pots. Or 250k. Slightly more expensive than buying one resistor however. Here

Again, I'm glad to do a custom set of pickups but either the resistor or new pots would be much more cost effective. Personally, I would try these options before dropping $$$ on pickups.

 

 

 

 

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Personally, I would go with both new pickups and pots.

... and I shouldn’t assume that Josh doesn’t have anything suitable in stock and JGale’s only solution is a custom set. There are boutique winders like Josh who have nice and warm low vintage and medium output pickups that are part of their normal production.

Just for my personal curiosity, what do you have in stock or is a part of your normal production that would fit the bill here Josh?

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4 hours ago, zenmindbeginner said:

Just for my personal curiosity, what do you have in stock or is a part of your normal production that would fit the bill here Josh?

I appreciate you asking Zen, and not to derail the thread but it's an interesting thing: during the 6 years of doing pickups professionally before I had a website, I built up a reputation as a custom maker who would really take the time to discuss with the customer and build exactly to their needs. 5 years ago, I dropped some serious coin on a guy to build my website (that he never finished and is somewhat of an embarrassment) and I populated it with known winds that sounded great. I've sold exactly 2 sets from my website because people still want to talk to me directly and work out the details just as I had done before! Because of that, I've learned to keep a limited amount of parts in stock and order what I need to suit the customer in the moment. This seems to work the best, at least for now.

To make a helpful suggestion straight-away: for an Alder/Maple guitar, likely equipped with a trem unit with a big steel block adding to the brightness: For the single coils I'd use 42AWG coil wire with heavy formvar coating, pack it in with a high turns-per-layer and try to stick 'em at around 6.2k with Alnico 5. Or, to go darker still - 42AWG Plain Enamel coated wire, 6.4k. For the humbucker: 43AWG, single polynylon coated wire, high turns-per-layer resulting in 14k, double screw-style with 1010 unplated steel pole screws, and an unoriented Alnico 5 bar magnet.

Still, I keep going back to either pots or a resistor - or both! @JGale, what's the control layout for this beast? Vol/Tone? Or Vol/Vol/Tone? If it's Vol/Tone only, a fella could replace those with V/T stacked pots: 250/250 for the single coils, 500/250 for the humbucker- get more and better control over the pickups individually and solve this problem for low dough. My point with this is why spend more money than one has to?

 

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6 hours ago, JGravelin said:

My point with this is why spend more money than one has to?

I asked myself this many times and I always come back to two life experiences at root: First, I grew up semi-poor (we had a snowmobile) in semi-rural upstate New York (I used to skip school and hitchhike to Albany). Dad worked nights and was never "social"...so I never got to stuff a large engine into a small chassis and then drive it like I owned it. Second, confronting my college flatmate about the Klipschorn Cornwalls and 225wpch Harmon-Kardon tha appeared overnight in the living room, no-doubt sourced through some nefarious act; he looked at me, popped a Remy Martin and said "Fuck it! This is my Turbo-charged Porsche"...and then we ran through every side of every Who album we had.

This makes sense, right?

 

The beast is wired Neck, N+M, M, M+SplitHB, HB (spittable by PP switch). The OEM JB had red2hot, white2ground, green/black to the switch stopping to effect the split HB @ #2. Damnedest switch, 12 lugs per side, took a while figure. The B/G to ground maneuver apparently sets the Bridge-side coil during the split.

So far everything matches the schematic I found online. Volume is A250K with 330pF bypass. Tone is P-P A300K with .022uF to ground.

Lately I have grown fond of using A250Ks, bypassing Volume with 7-800pF in parallel with 150K. Tone to ground .022uF.

Josh @JGravelin. I'm very interested, but I expect due diligence on my part should now be, as you suggest, to install new pots and then return to my impressions. I will do so using the OEM JB and a PATB-3 I recently installed, and hopefully give y'all a small spread of expectations. Thanks very much.

Watch this space!

 

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@JGale, your post is so full of Win!

You're in a good spot with everything from what I am gathering but man, dropping coin on a custom pickups - as nice as I try to make it - it's still real money and in these times; perhaps I'm imposing my own tight-wad "be careful, bud" ideas - but to try other non-obtrusive options that are low-cost first, this is the stuff that is practical and logical.

Play like Whos Next and Live At Leeds. All the time. Every time. ♥

You didn't state it directly but from what I've deduced from your words, you're working with 5 way switch - Vol. -Tone. Try this stack Vol/Tone pot idea!!! Your guitar is a perfect candidate for it and in doing so you'll have full and total control over how the single coils sound as well as the humbucker on it's own. I mean, look - I LOVE MONEY! I WANT ALL THE MONEY! But .. I'm a musician too, know exactly what it's like to be flat broke but wanting that Tone, I have a heart.. and it's part of my job to steer people toward the smart, inexpensive solutions first. It's about ethics and integrity for me, first and foremost.

If all else fails, holler at me for a custom set of pickups and I'll fleece you.

Kidding. Heh.

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I had good luck with an '82 prototype by cutting the bypass cap on one end. Easy to resolder if you want 

original wiring. Try .015 for tone cap. Just an opinion. 

Love is everywhere.

 

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On 5/11/2020 at 11:51 AM, JGale said:

Flame maple over Alder.

HSS.

Bright. very bright. Not looking to change it into another guitar (Izsa Strat). Just maximize what's there.

Just curious, but what kind of guitar is this, and what's in it now?

I've also always been curious about different pot values. I keep almost all of my guitars stock, unless I can't STAND how they sound, so I've had very little experience with the electronics side. Generally if I don't like the sound, I just sell it.

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