Describe scooped mids

[Mark Hammer]

Well I may have to retreat from my initial position. On the bus-ride into work this morning, I was reading a review of a new Washburn guitar in GP. The guitar uses a pair of stacked humbuckers that look like P90s. The reviewer described them as having a midscooped tone. Hmmm, maybe more possible than I thought. On the other hand, if the pickups are two flat-n-wide coils stacked, maybe the tone is a product of two coils, although obviously the sensing area is that of a single-coil.

but thanks for your confidence anyways....appreciated.

[David Schwab]

Well I may have to retreat from my initial position. On the bus-ride into work this morning, I was reading a review of a new Washburn guitar in GP. The guitar uses a pair of stacked humbuckers that look like P90s. The reviewer described them as having a midscooped tone. Hmmm, maybe more possible than I thought. On the other hand, if the pickups are two flat-n-wide coils stacked, maybe the tone is a product of two coils, although obviously the sensing area is that of a single-coil.

There are two coils... there's a lot of phase cancelation going on with stacked pickups. Usually you lose low end, so if they came up with a recipe to keep the low end, they probably pushed the notch up to the mids.

I'm just guessing of course...

[dpm]

Was this thread related to 'scooped mids' in the distorted metal sense? If it is I might be able to help.

IMHO (as a metal player, guitar maker/tech) trying to get that sound directly from the pickup doesn't work. There are a few production humbuckers around that claim to have a ton of bass and highs with scooped mids but to me it seems they're missing the point, and they sound craptacular. Lots of fizz, lots of woof, and no clarity.

The classic scooped sound cuts the mids post-distortion. If anything you want to hit the amp hard with a lot of upper mids and tight bass (think EMG 81). This seems to get things distorting quicker, there's more apparent volume, and the rolled off bass stops it getting muddy. Then you can scoop, if that's what you want to do. Personally, I likes me some good mids, and a touch less gain.

I was under the impression that the 'scooped' HB's used two radically different sounding coils - one very bright sounding, the other bassy. Is that correct?

Hopefully this was relevant to the original post??