Questions about high output pickups

[Béla]

Then you would just have a dull top end. Just use your tone control for that.

I fooled around in 5spice analysis (first time I use such software) and found different results from rolling down the tone knob and from using extra capacitance across the pickup.

This is the circuit I used for the analysis:


I didn't find (didn't look hard either) actual values of pickups. I guessed these values, and I think they will be good enough because I'm interested in how the response changes.


This is what happens if the tone knob is rolled back. On each trace, the linear taper tone knob is rolled back by 10%




But when the value of the C3 capacitor is increased, (the same es adding an extra capacitor across the pickup) the response will be clearly different from the tone knob example (each trace has 600pf more capacitance):



You could say that the resonant peak is higher, making the response too honky, thus not so good for thrash metal, but if I lower the tone knob in a setting where the peak occurs at 2kHz, this is what happens:



And now, we have a thick midrangy sound coming out from the same strat-ish pickup, only by having another capacitor, which could be turned off with a switch.

So instead of changing pickups, one could get satisfying results with small value capacitors. And it's always easier to lower the cutoff frequency than to increase it.

More turns=more current, so you will always get a more compressed oomph from an over would pickup.

The one thing about EMG's is when I switched out the 14K pickup from my lucite guitar for an EMG 85, I no longer had to use a compressor, which I liked using with that guitar.

Are you talking about actual compression, or the kind of dynamic reduction I pointed out from a pickup having less high end? I imagine the pickup's coil to be a highly linear system, apart from the harmonic distortion you can get when the pickup is too close to the string.

[Steve Conner]

Very nice work Bela

[David Schwab]

I fooled around in 5spice analysis (first time I use such software) and found different results from rolling down the tone knob and from using extra capacitance across the pickup.

Because... the tone control is using a larger cap, and now you have two caps in parallel. You just changed the value of the cap.

My point was that, yes, you can tune a coil with a small capacitor (which is what the tone control does... just at a lower frequency). This is nothing new. I have instructions from Bartolini from 1976 that show the same thing. I've been doing it since that time as well.

I'm sure EMG also do this, and the Audere Audio bass preamp has a load switch that does the same thing.

So you will alter your resonant peak that way, which can simulate a different pickup. But there's other things going on with the overwound pickup... different magnet, thinner wire, and more turns of wire which gives you more wind-to-wind effects like mutual inductance and capacitance.

I say wind two different pickups (or just get a PAF style and a distortion pickup) and try them, putting the cap on the PAF, and see what you get.

They will be similar but different. To really do the test they would both need the same magnet, so put a ceramic in the PAF... then you will really need that cap!

I have some DiMarzio style pickups that are wound to lower PAF specs, and they sound quite nice. But they don't sound like a Gibson style pickup wound the same way. They are brighter and tighter wounding.

It's just two different tones. You don't need a hot pickup to play leads, but it gives a different tone and feel. The fact that a lot of metal guys use EMG's show that they like the tone of a lower wound pickup, with the output of the hotter ones. EMG's actually have a lot of wire on them, but the buffering retains the highs.

And yes, some overwound pickups have compressed dynamics, because they reach saturation sooner, and just have a generally squashy feel. EMG's running on 9V also do this.

Every little thing you do changes something, and I'd guess we don't know the half of it yet.