Effects Of Bridge Humbucker Placement?

[Elias Graves]

This was brought up years ago, but never really answered. I have an Epi Alley Kat.


If you'll notice, the bridge pickup is placed a bit further away from the bridge than is normally seen on Epi/Gibson guitars. How much will 5/16" affectthe sound? I've been fighting to get a decent sounding bridge pickup in this guitar for a couple of years now, but have not been successful. Very little high end and what's there is harsh. Very pronounced mids and not especially musical sounding. Also very muffled sounding.

I've messed with everything from pickups to height adjustment, strings, pots, caps, wiring (even wiring schemes...I dropped the master volume setup and have tried both traditional Gibson style as well as single volume/tone) but to no avail.

The guitar is made like this...


A hollowed out solid mahogany body with a single block under the bridge and a laminated maple top and maple neck.

I'm open to suggestions on making this thing sound good as I enjoy playing it. Is it possible I just have a dog and nothing will make it sound right?

EG

[big_teee]

This was brought up years ago, but never really answered. I have an Epi Alley Kat.


If you'll notice, the bridge pickup is placed a bit further away from the bridge than is normally seen on Epi/Gibson guitars. How much will 5/16" affectthe sound? I've been fighting to get a decent sounding bridge pickup in this guitar for a couple of years now, but have not been successful. Very little high end and what's there is harsh. Very pronounced mids and not especially musical sounding. Also very muffled sounding.

I've messed with everything from pickups to height adjustment, strings, pots, caps, wiring (even wiring schemes...I dropped the master volume setup and have tried both traditional Gibson style as well as single volume/tone) but to no avail.

The guitar is made like this...


A hollowed out solid mahogany body with a single block under the bridge and a laminated maple top and maple neck.

I'm open to suggestions on making this thing sound good as I enjoy playing it. Is it possible I just have a dog and nothing will make it sound right?

EG

I always preferred the bridge pickup a little further from the bridge.
The closer you get to the bridge, it keeps sounding more trebble and tinny.
Do you make pickups.
On the Alley Kat, I would make a pickup a bit mismatched with more wire on the screw bobbin.
That would put more emphasis on sound nearer the bridge.
Also experiment with different magnets in the Alley Kat.
Good Luck,
Terry

[Elias Graves]

I do not make pickups. Any recommendations on something commercially available?

EG

[big_teee]

So what pickups have you tried?
I have a lot of humbucker experience but none with Semi Hollows.
So maybe others will weigh in here also.
I would think whatever works well in other semi hollows like the es335 should work.
Terry

[kg]

yes, i agree with big t... generally closer towards the bridge is going to accentuate upper harmonics and decentuate the fundamentals/roots. taken to an extreme and you get tinny sound with no balls.

[jrfrond]

I too like the bridge pickup a bit farther away.

I don't know what pickups you have tried, but a lower-output humbucker would work best. Those Epi pickups are nothing to write home about. I'd recommend TV Jones TV Classic in the humbucker mount (essentially a Filter'Tron) or a Lollar Imperial Low-Wind, which are meant for 335's and the like.

[big_teee]

I agree with Mr Frond.
A good Low wind.
I'm partial to my own.
Seymour Duncan makes several excellent Low Impedance PAF type choices.
Like the Seth Lover, Pearly Gates, & 59, to name a few.
Most Stock Pickups can be improved upon!
Good Luck,
Terry

[Elias Graves]

I've used the Epi 57, seth Lover, Gibson 498, Rose Day Breaker (filtertron type) rose New Dawn (PAF type)

EG

[David Schwab]

I like the Duncan Alnico II Pro humbuckers.

[big_teee]

I reread your original post.
If it was my guitar I would do this.
I make pickups, so I have more options.
I would initially install a pickup without the cover.
I would stay with a Low wind style pickup.
I would try different magnets in the same pickup.
You can change the magnets without removing the P/U from the guitar.
I would try A2, A5, C5,C8, & A8.
I would try them at different strengths, if you have magnet charging, and discharging capability.
In this same experiment, I would try different Caps, with a 500k Pot.
Probably a .022uf, or less Cap.
I would stick with the les paul individual Tone and Vol. for each the neck and bridge.
I have a guitar that is so bright at the bridge posistion.
The only way I could get tone I liked, was to Up the Tone Cap(.1uf and a .022uf in Parallel).
MisMatch the Coils(Strongest toward the neck, and find a Magnet that sounded best(A2 at full strength).
Sounds like you need the opposite of this.
If you have a P/U Winder in your area, maybe he would be willing to work with you.
You have the hardest job, changing the pickups and Pots on a SemiHollow.
After you get everything to suit, then and only then would I put a good quality Nickel cover on the Pickup.
B_T

[soundguruman]

the pole pieces are aligned with the string 8th harmonic point,
for example there is a harmonic point at the 12th fret,
divide that length in half for the next shorter 8th harmonic point
divide that length in half again and you have the next point, and so on.
It was Les Paul who created that design specification.

Should have used a mahogany neck.

[RoadToNever]

A dull and harsh bridge pickup is a common issue. You could move the pickup closer to the bridge by 1/16" but you'll likely have diminishing returns In the grand scheme of things.

A few things worth looking in to:
Cable capacitance - If it's too large you might not only loose highs but get an ugly resonance in the upper midrange. With a buffer in the chain or onboard this becomes less of an issue.
Tone control - Use it, it's the first aid when dealing with harsh tone, giving you sound some character. Try some different tone cap vaules in the range 1-4.7nF.
Pickups - The most important properties for great bridge position tone come down to a medium-high output, small diameter wire and tightly wound coils non-mismatched IMHO.

Hope this helps.

[soundguruman]

Besides putting the pickup in the correct harmonic location...(which is the KEY to this business)
Mahogany or Koa (really the same as iron wood...). You may not realize how much of a difference the wood makes. You may think of it as an electronic / mechanical system, but the affect of the type of wood is huge.
If you have a neck and or a body of maple, especially, you may never get the result you want, no matter how many pickups and capacitors you attach.
I cite my L6-s Gibson, a very well crafted instrument, which made entirely of maple, sounded dead, no matter how many different ways it was wired, pick-upped, nutted, and stringed, amped, etc...
Some designs of wood just sound dead for an electric guitar. So, the moral of the story, start with a good core of proper wood, before you dump money into pickups and all the other stuff. You may find that the sound of the thing is largely natural, from the wood, rather than electro-mechanical.

[Mark Hammer]

We'd like to think electric guitars ARE "electric", hence not especially influenced by the wood (which is just there to provide a machinable housing for the electronics, right?). The reality is that the electronics are themselves merely handmaidens to the strngs, since that is what they detect. The wood, in turn, sets what sorts of string properties are permitted to be prominent or are downplayed. So if that's all the pickups have to work with, yeah, wood matters.

[RoadToNever]

Let's not forget that the OP doesn't use a contact transducer of any sort :P
Seriously though one more thing that comes to mind: The bridge assemblies on Asian made guitars are atrocious. Lowest grade pot metal that just wiggles around. Even the most resonant piece of magic-mahogany won't be able to penetrate such a tonal condom.

[Chuck H]

I once had this problem on a custom Carvin guitar that I ordered with the optional 25.5" scale. The neck and bridge placement were correct but the bridge pickup location was not changed from what is standard on their 24.75" scale. The result was a bridge position pickup that was too far from the bridge. No grit or defined attack. Just sounded like a duck quacking away. I didn't want to sound like a duck so I routed for proper bridge pickup placement PLUS forward of that enough to mount a second humbucker. The end result was a three humbucker guitar with the bridge and middle pickup rings touching. It corrected the problem and gave me a bunch of wiring options that I used to great advantage.