Was Abigail having a bad day?

[LeftyStrat]

Back on February 10th, 2004?

I have a set of Fender Custom Shop 69's that I have spent almost six months "trying" to like. I say that because I was using EMG-SA's for several years prior, and felt like maybe I needed time to adjust.

But these pickups just plain suck. I have heard others rave about them, so either I got a bum set of pickups, or the "others" got a bump set of ears.

They lack any high end sparkle. There is a harshness in the upper mid range that negatively affects the "quack". The low end doesn't get any better, instead of a bell-like or piano-like bass, it sounds "blocky", like there is an emphasis in the upper bass to midrange.

The really strange part, is I took out my volume and tone pots, wired it straight, and then ran it to a box where I could try different value pots for the volume. Turns out a one meg pot makes it sound almost balanced! I would have expected this to be way too bright.

Is it just a bad set, or is this really how a 1969 strat pup is supposed to sound? Or is it all marketing crap?

[Rosewood]

I don't think a 69 strat was ever lacking any high end, are they overwound?

[LeftyStrat]

They are marketed as being to 69 specs. They don't seem to have very high output (well, other than the hum).

I should add, they are right handed pole stagger, and I have them in a lefty, but I can't see how that would affect much other than string balance.

[LeftyStrat]

The Fender specs are:

DC Resistance: 5.8k
Inductance: 2.2 Henries

I measure DC resistance as 5.4k. I don't have an inductance meter.

[Spence]

These pickups were just part of the mass-marketing machinery that is the Fender Custom Shop. Are we really to believe that a little old lady was wheeled out of retirement to do anything other than the signatures on the pickups and the photo opportunities ?
The other thing I've always argued is that no one, not even Fender ever said that she was any good at winding pickups. She's just the last one around who can do it.

[Rosewood]

5.4k with the pot connected sounds about right and that should have good high end to me, I don't know.

[Possum]

I heard they were wound to around 6K. Maybe I am not remembering right. they are supposed to be '69 repros. I've only heard one or two Fender custom shop pickups and they sounded dull to me. I have no idea what they are doing there, they use the same wire as the rest of us. at 5.4K they should be pretty darn sparkly. I think that number is wrong for that year though. Supposedly their magnets are dead-on recreations, maybe they are just dead :-)

For comparison here's my version of that year in two flavors:
http://www.sdpickups.com/audio/red%20house%20clean.mp3

This second version is slightly more chimey version:
http://www.sdpickups.com/audio/red%20house%20clean.mp3

If you were expecting really chimey tones you got the wrong year, you have to go to pre-CBS years for that, here's my take on 1959:
http://www.sdpickups.com/audio/59%20clean.mp3

The difference is the magnet wire, pre-CBS is heavy formvar types, CBS is plain enamel and skinnier magnets, very different styles. Not trying to sell pickups here, but this is a good sampling of classic strat formulas.

[madialex]

Sounds to me like they are wired wrong or out of phase somehow. When you said the lows were boxy I think, that sounds out of phase to me.....

[LeftyStrat]

Thanks for the responses. I'm mystified. I even pulled the shielded cable I had running from the volume pot to the jack and measured the capacitance on it. I've tried just about everything. I've played these through Marshalls, Blackface Fenders, as well as my Trainwreck clone, and they actually make these amps sound bad, lifeless, and dull (which is no easy task on the Trainwreck, making it sound dull is like taming a nuclear explosion).

My only reason for purchasing these was to sort of establish a baseline for my ears, I've been using the EMG-SA's for so long.

I'm actually thinking I'd rather break from wanting to sound like an old strat from a particular era (or any of my favorite players), I just wanted to get away from active electronics, I like the interaction with old fuzz faces and passive pickups, and you lose that with the EMG's.

Dave, I've actually been listening to clips on your site. Funny thing is, my favorite recording isn't of a strat pickup, it's the Icehouse Supercaster neck pickup. THAT is how I want my neck pickup to sound.

When I have the cash, I'll probably be contacting you. I'm also looking for something pretty hot in the bridge to push my trainwreck clone over the edge, something P90-ish.

For now I'll still the EMG-SA's back in. At least I won't have to deal with the hum. Of course, that brings up another thing about these pickups. My guitar is shielded with copper tape, and these pickups hum worse than any single coil I've every heard.

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by Possum

...but this is a good sampling of classic strat formulas.

Those clips sound great Dave!

Nice work.

I can see why people like old pre-CBS pickups.. the new ones are a tad bit bright, no?

[Spence]

Abigail's long suffering husband Terry Ybarra reckons that she always controlled her scatter pattern by creating a gentle breeze with her bingo wings

bingo flaps.jpg

She has since had brachioplasty which may explain the poor sound.

[madialex]

Ahhh, I see everyone's been in the happy juice this weekend.... Including me

[David Schwab]

I've always heard that Fender's Custom shop just walks down the hall to the production line and grabs parts.

Except for the finish or inlays or something they aren't all that different from the regular Fenders.

[Rosewood]

Thanks Spence, we were just about to eat, ham, ewwww.

[Possum]

the best solution to fix them is put them on Ebay and then go buy something else. This will fix the problem :-) I bet Abagail just sits around signing pickups that come off the computer winders. I've never really been impressed with Fender pickups in the last , uh, 30 something years. I bought a '57 reissue in the 90s and the pickups were just dead sounding, no life, pedals didn't help them, I read they redesigned them whatever that means and never read any positive reviews of those either. Like I said I don't know what they are doing but it doesn't work. Its actually kind of hard to make a strat coil sound bad but they manage to do it.....

the Supercaster neck pickup is real unique in the way its done there's nothing normal about it, it definitely does a classic strat tone in a tele neck spot.

[kevinT]

Originally Posted by Spence

Abigail's long suffering husband Terry Ybarra reckons that she always controlled her scatter pattern by creating a gentle breeze with her bingo wings

Attachment 1107

She has since had brachioplasty which may explain the poor sound.

that is nasty.....looks like lipo without the nip and tuck.

[LeftyStrat]

Originally Posted by Possum

the best solution to fix them is put them on Ebay and then go buy something else. This will fix the problem :-)

In fact, they're already out of the guitar, I'm getting ready to photo them and put them up on eBay. Maybe I should advertise them as the worst sounding set of pickups Fender ever made, then all you pickup makers could get in a bidding war over them.

Honestly, these pickups would lose in a side-by-side shootout with a cheap Radio Shack condenser mic taped on the inside of a cigar box guitar. They really are that bad. I played them one last time to get the auditory memory, pulled them and replaced them with the EMG-SA's, and ended up playing for a couple of hours through every amp in my shop. I feel like I just got my strat back after someone had stolen it.

I guess I now know why I walk away disgusted whenever I go into a music shop and see a new left-handed Fender and play it. My old '73 lefty Strat sounds and feels great even when it's not plugged in. I can't imagine comparing a pre-CBS Fender to today's guitars.

Originally Posted by Possum

the Supercaster neck pickup is real unique in the way its done there's nothing normal about it, it definitely does a classic strat tone in a tele neck spot.

I have a telecaster I'm finishing up right now, just need to sand/polish the finish (Lake Placid Blue, nitro, a real beauty), and I'll get in contact with you when I have the cash. I'm leaning towards a Possumcaster in the bridge and a Supercaster Rhythm in the neck.

BTW, your web site looks great, and the clips are really well done. Sorry for sucking up so much of your bandwidth

[Possum]

I had EMG as a client for about 12-14 years, did all their ad and design work, really boosted their business back in the 80s. They outfitted my Ibanez strat with EMG SA's and two of the tone active pots. I really liked them for a long time, but I was practicing with some guys on a band that never went live. I picked up my buddy's strat which had passive pickups in it and played it a little bit. Damn! I had forgotten what single coils really sound like, next day I ripped out the EMGs and told the guitar tech to throw 'em away or keep 'em. Give me noisy single coils, they just have more life in them when they're good...

[Possum]

hey does your strat have one of those TBX controls in it? those things are tone killers, might have been a problem?

[LeftyStrat]

No, I just have the SA's with none of the active tone things. I'm not saying the EMG-SA's are great sounding pickups (well, they KILL those Fender Custom Shop pickups), they are good for the guitarist that uses a lot of effects and has to deal with the type noise that, say, David Gilmour might have to deal with on stage. But I would never use them when recording. They went in my number one strat when I was gigging.

But seriously, I could post two clips here with no indication of which was which, and *everyone* on this board would pick the EMG-SA's over this set of Fender Custom shop pickups. I'll hold off on listing the "Abigail" pickups on eBay (Spence's pic best describes their tone), if anyone is up for the comparison.

Though I agree with you, there is nothing like having no opamps/silicon between a strat and a good amp, whether it be a Fender, Marshall, Vox, or especially a Trainwreck or Dumble (never played a real one, but my clones are good enough to give goosebumps). My one exception is a germanium transistor based fuzz face between a Fender Strat and a Marshall amp (but hey, it isn't silicon). Something about how the circuit loads a pickup, combined with a Marshall can be amazing. If you want proof go watch "Like a Rolling Stone" from Hendrix at Monterey, believe it or not, the fuzz face is on for most of the song.

I repair, build, and design amps, and occasionally clone a customers vintage amp (when the value of an original gets too expensive to risk taking to a gig), so I need to be able to have enough "representative" guitars and pickups around to compare my work to the original amp. I thought I could "go cheap", because honestly, today's boutique pickup winder (hate that word "boutique") is probably putting out better pickups than Gibson or Fender ever made. Or at least more consistent examples of the best ones.

[Possum]

TBX isn't an active circuit, its a fender mid control thing on some strats, its a tone killer too. Just wondered if how you wired the pickups in might have done something to them....

[David Schwab]

The TBX control places a large value resistor (1 meg I think) between the tone control and ground when the tone is at 10, thereby removing the tone circuit, and brighting up the tone. I think the original reason was to simulate the bridge pickup on a Strat (which has no tone control) on some of the newer Strat type guitars with master tones.

[GlennW]

I had a TBX (from a late 80s Am Std Strat) in a Tele for a while. It was good at getting the "Start Me Up" sound, but that was about it. It's in a little box on a shelf now.

[LeftyStrat]

Sorry, thought you were talking about some of the EMG tone controls.

In fact just to be sure there wasn't something wrong, I removed all tone and volume controls from the guitar, with the pickup selector going straight to the output jack, and then ran the other end of the guitar cable to a jack wired to a resistance decade box (between hot and ground) so I could hear what affect different pot values would have.

I also verified that there wasn't anything crazy going on at the pickup selector. I tested for stray capacitance between each pole of the switch, thinking that could be the source of the dullness.

I tried the pickups at every height from flush to stratitis in 1/8" increments.

I've uploaded a couple of pics, unfortunately my camera does do extreme close ups very well.

[Spence]

I may be wrong here but I seem to remember that the pickups Abigail Ybarra wound herself for the custom shop had her signature on. the one's she approved were wound by others and had her initials on.

[LeftyStrat]

Originally Posted by Spence

I may be wrong here but I seem to remember that the pickups Abigail Ybarra wound herself for the custom shop had her signature on. the one's she approved were wound by others and had her initials on.

"Each pickup is created, dated, and initialed by Abigail Ybarra who has been winding pickups for Fender since the late 50's.'

http://www.fender.com/products//sear...tno=0992114000

Of course, who knows what the marketing team considers "created" to mean. Might just mean she stands over the machine winder and flaps her "wings."