Angled pickups - humbucker setup

[kayakerca]

A custom guitar builder has asked me to build his some sort of humbucker that is angled to match the frets (30° in the case of the attached bobbin image, but 16° is the required). No problem with the construction IF I use alnico pole pieces like in a Strat. I have never built a set of straight up alnico based humbuckers (without a baseplate) and was hoping some of you have and could comment of the difference in tonal characteristics from a regular humbucker of similar spec's. Obviously I would have 2 of the attached bobbins side-by-side with the corner fillets removed from the side of each pickup where they make contact.



Any comments on tonal differences would be much appreciated.

[TomCarlos]

Perhaps you can study the Seymour Duncan SH-4 JB Model Slant Humbucker Pickup as an example?

[kayakerca]

Perhaps you can study the Seymour Duncan SH-4 JB Model Slant Humbucker Pickup as an example?

The SD SH-4 JB is a regular type humbucker (screws/slugs/baseplate/bar magnet) but with marginally stagger bobbins. I'm looking at the difference between that type of humbucker and a pair of bobbins with alnico pole pieces (no baseplate, no bar magnet, no screws, no slugs).

[Helmholtz]

Seymour Duncan made these in the 80s: https://reverb.com/item/11970491-sey...s-black-pickup

Newer version has staggered mags: https://www.seymourduncan.com/pickup/stag-mag

[Mike Sulzer]

You can use steel slugs with special spacings, etc. (if you want that sound) by putting a small neo magnet on the bottom of each slug instead of using a bar Alnico. Many sizes are available; I just tried it with rectangular magnets 3/8" by 3/16" by 1/16" thick (actually 2 with thickness 1/32") placed flat on each slug, magnetized in the direction of the slug axis. Field strength is close to the same as an SD SH2N I had sitting on the table.

The Alnico rod version of the HB will have maybe half the inductance, lower loss (higher Q resonance), and a bit less output, probably. But more high frequencies.

A custom guitar builder has asked me to build his some sort of humbucker that is angled to match the frets (30° in the case of the attached bobbin image, but 16° is the required). No problem with the construction IF I use alnico pole pieces like in a Strat. I have never built a set of straight up alnico based humbuckers (without a baseplate) and was hoping some of you have and could comment of the difference in tonal characteristics from a regular humbucker of similar spec's. Obviously I would have 2 of the attached bobbins side-by-side with the corner fillets removed from the side of each pickup where they make contact.

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Any comments on tonal differences would be much appreciated.

[copperheadroads]

If you wanted to do a baseplate
this should work for a Nighthawk or fan fret guitar .

[Mark Hammer]

What you describe is sort of like a wide-range humbucker, but with alnico rather than cunife polepieces. A "normal" HB magnetically couples the two rows of slugs with the underlying bar magnet If one looks closely at a WRHB, the adjustable polepieces are not physically coupled to anything, even the baseplate. I would imagine the baseplate plays some sort of role, via all that ferromagnetic voodoo I don't know much about. But the holes for accessing the screwdriver slots in the "downward-facing" polepieces are big enough that the polepieces are only near the baseplate, without touching it. And, as near as I can deduce, the arrangement of having 3 polepieces on each coil face up, taking into consideration which 3, the purpose was to mimic a slanted pickup, as found on a Tele or Strat.

So, if you want a sense of the resulting tone, some hint is given by the WRHB....minus the magnet type, polepiece height difference, etc.

[kayakerca]

Thanks all for the input. I've got the flatwork cut out and ready to go. I machined a spacer to set the A5's. I machined a P90 baseplate to the 16° of perpendicular match for the flatwork (that came out pretty nice). Decided on a flatwork spacing of .360", about half way between a humbucker .25" and a Stat .4375" spacing. Didn't want it too fat like a humbucker or quite as cutting as Strat. Using .688" A5 rod magnets which gives me ~ .140" spacing between the bottom flatwork and the baseplate (basically the space that results from using .688" rod magnets). Probably wind to marginally over ~8k on the neck and ~ 10% more for the bridge. At the end of the day, Hopefully the luthier likes the tone enough that it is not just a one off.

[RedHouse]

kyakerca, if your question is about the tonal difference I can say a bit, I been making them for some years now.
(humbuckers w/Alnico poles)

They are brighter and a bit more dynamic, they don't have the semi-compressed tone that a normal Humbucker has. If your customer is looking for normal Humbucker tone this topology might not be for them.

As for my own opinion, I was (at first) going to write-them-off as a worthy experiment but after playing them a while myself I noted they have their own merit and are actually quite useful to me. I have a set in one of my Strat's that has the HH layout, and my Uncle liked them so much, well, he now has a set in his HH strat too.

[kayakerca]

kyakerca, if your question is about the tonal difference I can say a bit, I been making them for some years now.
(humbuckers w/Alnico poles)

They are brighter and a bit more dynamic, they don't have the semi-compressed tone that a normal Humbucker has. If your customer is looking for normal Humbucker tone this topology might not be for them.

As for my own opinion, I was (at first) going to write-them-off as a worthy experiment but after playing them a while myself I noted they have their own merit and are actually quite useful to me. I have a set in one of my Strat's that has the HH layout, and my Uncle liked them so much, well, he now has a set in his HH strat too.

That is what I was looking to hear. Not a Strat and not a humbucker. The luthier wanted a usable tone that was neither of those conventional tones necessarily. His electric guitar builds are extremely unique and he wanted unique tone in the pickups to go along with that (as well as some noise cancellation).

Did you use metal baseplates? I have with these, at least this iteration of them. I reshaped a P90 baseplate to match the 16° the luthier requested for this fanned fret guitar build.

Here is where I am at in the wind components to this point. I just laid the second bobbin set on its side to show the pole pieces out the bottom like a Tele neck pickup.



I really appreciate your comments on the tonal characteristics Brad.

[big_teee]

I have a humbucker (not angled) that I made in my personal lefty test strat HSS.
I took a couple 53 mm hum bobbins, modified them to take 187 rod mags.
Made the height spacing taller, and made it splittable.
It sounds like a good strat pickup split, and more like a hot JB when in HB mode.
I just made the one, and never got past the prototype version.
It sounded to good to take out, it is still in there.
T

[kayakerca]

I have a humbucker (not angled) that I made in my personal lefty test strat HSS.
I took a couple 53 mm hum bobbins, modified them to take 187 rod mags.
Made the height spacing taller, and made it splittable.
It sounds like a good strat pickup split, and more like a hot JB when in HB mode.
I just made the one, and never got past the prototype version.
It sounded to good to take out, it is still in there.
T

Do you have a metal baseplate on the bottom T?

[big_teee]

Yes, it has a metal baseplate.
I don't remember if I modded the baseplate, or used one for 53mm bobbins.
It has been a few years since I did it.
I sawed the bobbins in two, and glued the magnets in the two bobbin halves.
Not the ideal way to make one, but was a proto, and just wanted to see if I could make something I liked the sound of.
T

[kayakerca]

Well, the pickups are done and all packaged up for the customer.

It was an interesting project and if they produce a usable tone, I'll add them to the offering. Not sure how that is going to turn out at this point as they will definitely be on the very low output side of things. I wound the neck to 7.6kΩ and the bridge to 7.8kΩ. However, the inductance was a little lower than I would have preferred with 2.3H and 2.4H for the neck and bridge respectively. Mike S. was definitely right about the inductance levels inherent in this design.

The physical bobbin dimensioning to 16° for the fanned fret setup was pretty straight forward with the laser. Again, my only hope is that I end up with a usable tone.

Here is a look at the final product.



Thanks everyone for your input. It all helped.

Udpate. . . Also added a shot of the progress of the ultimate destination sent to me by the luthier.

[kayakerca]

So I have a little feedback on the pickup now. I asked the luthier to try the pickup in something before doing routing the guitar body for this one of a kind pickup (one of a kind by shape only). While the setup isn't the same as it would be in a shielded body, I take it as a win.

Here are the guitar builders initial thoughts on the tone. . .

"I am happy to report that the pickups are definitely usable. So far I've only tried the bridge pickup, coils in series, and of course it's probably sounding a bit different than ideal because of the way it's mounted (upside down, too far from the strings, completely unshielded). But my impression is that it has plenty of output. It seems to be pretty loud and quite bright, with a little bit of midrange "honk" that I quite enjoy. The noise level seems high, but that's probably because my impromptu rig has a lot of bare, unshielded wire hanging off it."

Again, I'm counting this as a success. I will hopefully get an audio clip from the finished guitar when it is ready that I can share them hear for anyone interested in the tone from that configuration of a pickup.