Silent single coil

[Mike Sulzer]

Thanks Dave, Mike seemed to be insisting that buckers only have notched frequencies because of the coils hearing different areas of the strings, which stacked buckers don't.

Yep, and I will keep on insisting until someone makes a repeatable measurement showing what you claim and explains why it happens. That is what I find convincing.

Stacked humbuckers work because there is more flux from the vibrating string passing through the top coil than the bottom coil; so when the coils are connected out of phase, the signals only partially cancel. This works at all frequencies.

There is an interesting effect that changes the frequency response of a stacked humbucker when the coils are connected in phase. For the same reason that some flux from the string gets to the bottom coil, some flux produced by current in the top coil passes through the bottom coil, and vice versa. This means that the coils are coupled, but imperfectly. The total inductance of the seires combination is the sum of the individual inductances and the mutual. But the mutual inductance is a signed quantity. If the coils are connected in phase, the mutual inductance increases the total inductance; when they are connected out of phase, the mutual inductance decreases the total inductance. Thus, out of phase connection, the normal way for a stacked hubucker, has a higher resonance frequency, and is brighter, than in phase.

A side by side humbucker generally has more inductance, and thus less highs, from the two cols connected in series than a single coil. The frequency loss introduced by the sampling is somewhat different. It is not really a low pass filter, but approximately a comb filter.

[Possum]

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OK got it. The secret is don't match the coils. If you want single coil tone USE a single coil. I can see why maybe a sidewinder bucker might be a better idea? It wouldn't have these same problems correct?

[Vihar]

The reason I like PAFs is because they were seldom exactly matched, and just the design details of each bobbin and associated steel parts guarantees they won't match. They are much more single coil/P90 sounding than perfect humbucking. Perfect humbucking is an engineer's ideal but a musician's disaster.....

To each his own, man. I personally don't like the tone of PAFs, not enough treble, not enough definition. Someone that plays with a pick and uses thinner strings they might be ok, especially with a good amount of distortion, but for me they still don't bring out all the nuances I'd like to hear. On the other hand, I find my EMGs to be perfect for my taste. I can see though that for someone who's only interested in copying old guitar tones and not wanting to find something new or different, PAFs and regular humming single coils are the perfect devices.

[Possum]

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Have you ever actually played a real set of PAFs? It doesn't sound like you have, because there is no lack of treble and they have plenty of definition. You ought to actually visit my website sometime, half of what I make are my own unique designs of pickups that no one else makes and have nothing to do with vintage pickups. I recreate PAFs and love them because they are so very clear sounding and I don't see anyone doing them accurately. Big companies use alot of slick marketing verbage and say they've recreated them, blah blah, but I've dissected most of the best known ones and had all the metals in them analyzed and they are nothing like what you find in PAFs and are usually tailored for modern players who like dark pickups.....they're not PAFs

[David Schwab]

Yeah, PAFs are bright! I had some very early patent label pickups. The owner replaced them with DiMarzios because they were too bright and clear for him.

That dark humbucker thing is a myth.

[Vihar]

Well depends on what you call bright. I need more of the real highs and not just high mids.

According to Bill Lawrence "As a general rule, the higher the inductance, the lesser the highs. For example, a traditional strat pickup has an inductance around 2.3 henry while a Gibson PAF has an inductance around 4.4 henry...", which explains my observations nicely.

Also, something with that much metal around the coils will surely generate eddy currents, that's why removing the cover of a PAF style pickup will make it sound more open.

[StarryNight]

Do you think the age of the pickup and the fact that over time pickups move toward becoming more microphonic has something to do with the 'bright' character of PAFs?

[Vihar]

Do you think the age of the pickup and the fact that over time pickups move toward becoming more microphonic has something to do with the 'bright' character of PAFs?

No I don't. I don't think they are "bright" to begin with. To me, vintage bright is what Fender single coils are, especially strat pickups (no baseplate or cover).

[Mike Sulzer]

No I don't. I don't think they are "bright" to begin with. To me, vintage bright is what Fender single coils are, especially strat pickups (no baseplate or cover).

Exactly. Single coil pickups with no metal around are the brightest.

[Possum]

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I think you just don't like humbuckers period. PAFs are not dark, average inductance is 4 henries, AC resistance 10-11K. Modern buckers are usually over that because face it, most guitar players are using printed circuit tube amps or solid state, now THOSE are bright amps, so you need dark humbuckers to work with them. There used to be a guy at our jam who brought this horrible Deluxe Reverb "reissue" and a couple of us finally asked him to leave it at home because it was shredding our ear drums and breaking glass, horrible little amp that sounds nothing like the real thing. Most cheap humbucker equipped guitars come with bright pickups but they use .047uf tone caps and really trashy wiring harnesses to dumb them down, this cuts out alot of the brightness. If PAFs were dark I would have zero interest in them. PAFs metal are actually VERY bright, it was the magnet wire that brought that down into usability. By comparison, original 1950's P90s were darker, usually 5-6 henrys, I've heard a set from '53 that sounded very strat-like. If you ever get a chance to play a real vintage PAF equipped guitar, dont pass it up, you might fall in love :-) The reason too many people think they are fat and dark is because guys back in those days actually used their tone controls and the amps were probably darker, without master volume controls, guitar cords were very high capacitance; they were able to dial in darker fat tones using those pickups, Clapton is a classic example of an extreme version of that, his pickups weren't that dark.

[Possum]

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BTW I own what is probably a '61 PAF (long magnet), that came from a Gibson test guitar (335) from their Lab amp factory, never had a sticker on it, the guitar was a '62, but those usually had shorter magnets, so I"m assuming its an earlier pickup. I also have a '63, the only difference there being poly wire instead of plain enamel. I've also had some '60 PAFs here from the classic era, all these pickups are quite bright, and with the treble turned up on an amp could probably annoy some people. I"m not saying there weren't any dark PAFs because some of them had too much wire on them, and many as they age get partial coil shorts in them which dull them down substantially. But the majority of them were plenty bright, probably why they fell out of favor when DiMarzio came along and amps got brighter with master volumes.....

[Mike Sulzer]

I think you just don't like humbuckers period.

A fact does not imply a preference. I introduced PAFs into this discussion as an example of pickups that have considerable variation in the turns count on the two coils. The rest is in your head.

Guitar tone controls: theory, measurement, and listening tests all show that whether the cap values is .022 or .047 does not matter over most of the range of the tone pot. This is because the impedance of either capacitor value at high frequencies is much less than 500K. When you turn down the pot from 10, you are lowering the resistive load on the pickup; that is why you cut highs. When you get closer to zero, then the value of the capacitor matters, for that really bassy sound.

A tube amp using a pc board is not necessarily brighter than one wired point to point. It might be; perhaps many are, but it need not be so.

[Possum]

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The value of your tone pot CAP DOES affect the treble range of the pickup, especially when the tone control is not being used. I know this first hand. I had forgotten during my prototyping tests last year that I had left the .047uf tone caps in my cheap LP, and was banging my head against the wall because I just could not force that pickup to hit a certain treble range, then I opened the control cavity and there sat two green .047uf monsters. Replaced them with .022's and suddenly they were sounding like the pickups in my other guitar which have same. There is no argument about this, its a real effect.

Here is a set of real PAFs, you think these are muddy and dull?
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFAo-tFDRb4"]YouTube- 1959 Gibson Les Paul Custom "Black Beauty" # 9 0468[/ame]

[David King]

Put a whammy on there and you'd have a (very quiet) Strat.

What about played through a Gibson amp?

[Possum]

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Those are very typical PAFs, put those in the hands of Jimmy Page and you get Zeppelin tone, Bloomfield, you get Bloomy tone etc. etc.. Admittedly that guitar is solid mahogany, no maple cap but most of those pickups are in that range. This is why I say if you've never played real ones before and only played Gibson or Duncans, you don't know what you're missing. They also have elements of P90 tone in them, and in middle position could be mistaken for middle position on a tele. God tone , there's so much you can do with pickups like that that the bad copies don't even come near. The closest I've heard so far have been some Gibson Burstbuckers in the hands of a pro, but lately, talking to Jon with what he's found about them vs. what I found, they aren't made consistenlty to a strict recipe and there's some that are real muddy, I hear that from customers alot...mud. Someone pointed me to a YT video where someone unwound some BB's quite alot and the tone improved alot, but they didn't follow the real details in real PAFs....