Impact of neck pickup on electric guitar tone

[Stratz]

Then why do they make two & three pickup guitars if one is all you need.
I don't own any one pickup guitars either, but it's fine if you do!
T

I never said one is all you need. I did say that you can get a lot of tones from a single P90 guitar by using the vol/tone controls and picking pressure. I've owned and still own a few P90 guitars and they're a lot of fun to play because of how the pickups respond.
Leslie West still plays a LP Jr at times although I think he's had a couple of endorsements from Steinberger and others over the years.
Heres a vid that you can skim through. Not the best example but if you owned a single P90 guitar I believe you'd understand what they're trying to explain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUdq59CRcxk

[Steve A.]

Wow, no variety? I take it you either never played a LP Jr with a P90 or you never quite learned how to use your volume & tone controls and pick attack to tailor your tone.
There are a ton of great tones that can be coaxed from a single P90 LP Jr.
A good player can make a Jr sound just like a two pickup LP

I bought a LP Jr. about 15 years ago when MF was blowing them out for $400. That was the first time I ordered a mail order guitar and was pleased that it was really nice and that I didn't have to return it.

I tried replacing the ceramic magnets with matched and unmatched pairs of alnico, all of which sounded good in their own way but I was able to get the widest variety of sounds from the stock ceramic magnets.

FWIW my first "real" guitar was a single pickup Melody Maker from the early 60's.

Steve Ahola

P.S. Jeff Beck practically invented modern rock guitar playing his Esquire with the Yardbirds in 1965.

http://www.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle...-beck-428.aspx

[big_teee]

Then why do they make two & three pickup guitars if one is all you need.
I don't own any one pickup guitars either, but it's fine if you do!
Leslie West was one of the rockers I remember that played the LP Jr.
He said he used it because it was cheap and it sounded good.
He now plays expensive guitars with multiple pickups.
The only way I know, you can get that great allman Bros. neck tone is with a neck pickup.
Ask Warren Haynes! Just my 2 cents!
T

[Stratz]

I would never want a one pickup guitar. No variety there.
JJ

Wow, no variety? I take it you either never played a LP Jr with a P90 or you never quite learned how to use your volume & tone controls and pick attack to tailor your tone.
There are a ton of great tones that can be coaxed from a single P90 LP Jr.
A good player can make a Jr sound just like a two pickup LP

[Steve A.]

That's an interesting question. In a loaded transformer, you'd have "back EMF" pushing against the original source the magnetic field. I wonder if a guitar pickup produces "back EMF" against the string, and how it might effect the string's movement.

If this was the case wouldn't the winding direction of the second pickup make a difference? Just wondering...

Steve Ahola

P.S. As for the original question about Esquires and Les Paul Jrs I think that the extra body wood around the neck joint would have the biggest effect. As for the effect of the pickup itself that might be best tested on a hollow body guitar, perhaps by adding a floating neck pickup.

[tbonuss]

Agreed, but I did mean it as just an extreme example. It happens with ALL functional pickups to some extent--and should be balanced on any good setup. Seems like some folks are disagreeing with that, which makes me feel like I'm missing something.

[Mike Sulzer]

What am I missing here...

In my experience, the neck pickup can have a profound impact on tone. For example, I was just setting up my prototype guitar (which I test a bunch of different stuff on), and I was getting dissonant harmonic "beats" when only using the bridge blade humbucker on the G and D strings on high gain amp models. So I lowered the neck Fender '57/'62 until they went away (this pickup was alway turned off for this part of the setup), now it sounds great. I feel like I am missing the point of all of this, so if I am I apologize...its physics...it HAS to effect the tone.

So...the OP question is certainly a good one. In my experience, yes, it effects the tone.

Yes, any pickup that is close enough to the strings (or has very strong magnets) affects how the strings vibrate, and it, or any other pickup will detect the ugly sound. Your results are an example of what I wrote in post #20 on April 24.

[tbonuss]

What am I missing here...

In my experience, the neck pickup can have a profound impact on tone. For example, I was just setting up my prototype guitar (which I test a bunch of different stuff on), and I was getting dissonant harmonic "beats" when only using the bridge blade humbucker on the G and D strings on high gain amp models. So I lowered the neck Fender '57/'62 until they went away (this pickup was alway turned off for this part of the setup), now it sounds great. I feel like I am missing the point of all of this, so if I am I apologize...its physics...it HAS to effect the tone.

So...the OP question is certainly a good one. In my experience, yes, it effects the tone.

[David King]

Absolutely. There's no free lunch, the energy comes out of the strings and get's amplified. How much energy comes out depends on the input impedance of the amp.

[rjb]

I am not sure but don't the capacitors tie in here somewhere.

Not to mention that 2 of the 3 switch positions on an Esquire select tone circuits unlike those on a Telecaster.
Fender Esquire Basics

[SpareRibs]

Hello,
I am not sure but don't the capacitors tie in here somewhere.

[Elias Graves]

There's a perfectly logical reason Juniors and Esquires sound different and it's not what you think.
Guitarists are trained to EQ their rig to the darker sounding pickup, which is nearly always the neck pup. From there, we dial back tone on the bridge pickup to compensate.
With no neck pickup to accommodate, you EQ your rig directly to the bridge pickup, as there is no neck pickup to account for.
It doesn't actually sound any different...just that you EQ your rig differently for a different guitar.

My theory and I'm sticking to it.

[Mike Sulzer]

That's a much more scholarly answer than the one I considered:
"I think you guys are wasting time picking fly specks out of the ground pepper."

But if you really like flies and pepper, here's an experiment you can do:

1. Locate a guitar.

2. Construct a "shorted turn" (the size of a coil, made out of some heavy wire) that can fit under the strings and sit over a coil.

3. Listen to the guitar on one of the pickups. (Use open strings so they do not vibrate against the shorted turn in the next step.)

4. Put the shorted turn over another pickup or one of the coils of another pickup (if humbucker); listen again.

The shorted turn soaks up some additional energy from the strings. Is it significant?

Maybe I will try this someday, but is the answer not obvious? You have to work pretty hard to make a tightly coupled magnetic device; that is not the purpose of a guitar pickup.

[rjb]

Guitars, on the other hand, have a very low magnetic coupling to the string, so shorting out the pickup would not reflect any measurable damping on the string vibration. The pickup has such a high DCR winding resistance, unlike the microphone example above, that a shorted or loaded output had very little effect back to the string vibration.

That's a much more scholarly answer than the one I considered:
"I think you guys are wasting time picking fly specks out of the ground pepper."

[John Kolbeck]

I hope this answers the question?

Absolutely, thanks a lot.