The ARTEC Mudbucker. Demudding?

[bea]

The ARTEC mudbucker is the right one on the following picture:



It is wound to 30 kOhms, has 4 (!) ceramic magnets which unlike the Gibson (?) are reversed in polarity on both sides of the pickup.

What does this tell me on the orientation of the coil windings? I have already opened it (the picture sghow only one coil connected) but did not document the original state :-(

I guess i need to connect red to black on each coil but i am unsure.

Her is a picture of mine:



It is about reducing the muddiness of the PU without rewinding it.

Ideas: replace the pole screws by iron blades. What will work better against eddie currents - vertical or horizontal layering (i can easily do three vertival blades or 2 stacked bars).

Maybe remove the upper magnets - the might increase the aperture of the pickup?

Using the two bobbins in parallel in order to increase the treble resonance and to reduce the output to a level compatible with the bridge minihumbucker?

[big_teee]

I don't know how your going to get a 30k pickup to not be muddy.
You might try taking some wire off of the coils.
If you reduce the magnets, I would presume it would get muddier.
You have some good looking parts, IMO tear it up and start over.
GL,
T

[bea]

Well, the 30 k are two coils of 15 k in series. Wiring them in parallel yields 7.5 k. Wich means a lot less damping of the pickup resonance. And probably a lot better when used in parallel with a mini humbucker. We'll see.

The resonance frequency of each single coil is lowered by 1.4 (sqrt(2)) by connecting them in series and it is increased by the same factor if connecting them in parallel. Effectively the resonance will double if i go from serial to parallel humbucking. It will increase even more if i use a buffer amp and avoid the compensation for the cable capacity.

[the great waldo]

Hi Bea

I would swap out the magnets and use Alnico 3 The last time I made a humbucker using them the customer said it sounded like a strat !

Cheers

Andrew

The ARTEC mudbucker is the right one on the following picture:



It is wound to 30 kOhms, has 4 (!) ceramic magnets which unlike the Gibson (?) are reversed in polarity on both sides of the pickup.

What does this tell me on the orientation of the coil windings? I have already opened it (the picture sghow only one coil connected) but did not document the original state :-(

I guess i need to connect red to black on each coil but i am unsure.

Her is a picture of mine:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]28190[/ATTACH]

It is about reducing the muddiness of the PU without rewinding it.

Ideas: replace the pole screws by iron blades. What will work better against eddie currents - vertical or horizontal layering (i can easily do three vertival blades or 2 stacked bars).

Maybe remove the upper magnets - the might increase the aperture of the pickup?

Using the two bobbins in parallel in order to increase the treble resonance and to reduce the output to a level compatible with the bridge minihumbucker?

[bea]

Well, tested it in the SC variant. Nice deep warm sound, really powerful and a lot better than the Gibson pseudo sidewinder, subtle treble. Would be interesitng to wire it as a parallel humbucker. Unfortunately the E-string is pretty silent, and that on the narrow string spacing of an epiphone eb-3! What can i do about that?

Here the current state of the beast

[David Schwab]

The first thing I see with the Artec is that the magnets are installed the wrong way. They need to all be facing the steel blade the same. You can see the white paint on the one magnet which indicates North. They all need to have North facing out, or in. If you get hum, wire a coil in reverse, or flip it over.

I took a Gibson mudbucker and unwound it to 12k in series. That sounded much clearer.

[bea]

Dave, thanks for the hint. Yes, it hums. Heavily. I will correct the polarity and by that opportunity also remove the upper pair of magnets. That will probably lighten up the sound a tiny bit (the upper magnets should contribute audibly to the aperture of the pickup, at least they do in the Epiphone variant), and it will be still loud enough for the mini humbucker in an Epiphone EB-3.

BTW: despite the hum the pickup now sounds fine - dark, warm and that little extra treble it already has makes it a bit more "emphasized" as before. I'll tune it so that there will be a well balanced mix with the bridge pickup (it is already quite good) and the have a very useful tonal range. No need to fiddle around with decoupling resistors i need with the 1.2 k sidewinders ...

I think i should concentrate my efforts for now on replacement pickups for my Gibson LP Junior DC - i think of LoZ P90/Darkstar/Framus-Bill-Lawrence-HiFi-like constructions in both positions. And then on Ultra-Flat LoZ-Designs for an SG bass currently in the works. One of the reasons is purely pragmatic: i have enough thick wire for LoZ designs and do not trust my improvised winder setup to be used with 42 AWG. And i find LoZ-Pickups fascinating.

BTW: do the Bisonics need hum compensation coils or are they silent?

[David Schwab]

One of the reasons is purely pragmatic: i have enough thick wire for LoZ designs and do not trust my improvised winder setup to be used with 42 AWG. And i find LoZ-Pickups fascinating.

I used to wind low z pickups with 42 gauge wire. That's also how Bill Lawrence did the Les Paul Signature pickups.

BTW: do the Bisonics need hum compensation coils or are they silent?

They are single coils, so they do hum.

[bea]

Which means that i might consider a P100 - alike construction or a compensation coil.
Will the gauge of the wire will have any effect on the sound in a LoZ setup?

(Of course I consider to use the 0.2 mm wire i have already there...)

[big_teee]

I got an old Gibson EB-3 in the shop today.
Thought the Sidewinder needed to be rewound.
Turned out to have a grounded push back cable, inside the pickup.
I fixed that, the pickup is good, and measures exactly 30k.
It is probably a 60s or 70s Short scale.
T

[David Schwab]

I rewound one once. Took forever! lol

[jonson]

Both my eb3 and eb2d's are over 30k as from the factory and I wouldn't rewind them I love that bottom end.

[bea]

I actually like the ARTEC after my modifications. Unfortunately it does not fit into the hole of the modern Gibson basses. Neither does the Epiphone sidewinder.

[Zhangliqun]

Which means that i might consider a P100 - alike construction or a compensation coil.

I have no experience with the pickups in your picture and I do not wind bass pickups so take the following with a grain of salt:

The P100 is the Edsel of pickups, so bad that Gibson doesn't make them anymore. Two 9k coils wired in parallel made for the dullest, muddiest most un-P90-like sound you could possibly get. So bad that most standard side-by-side humbuckers sound more like a P90 to me than the P100 does.

In other words, the fact that the coils are wired in parallel really doesn't do much if anything to make the pickup more detailed and articulate. Series vs. parallel with the P100 is really just a choice between loud mud and mellow mud. So I can only imagine that a 30k wind, even if it's 43 gauge, would just be even worse. ( I have a friend with an LP Special with P100's and I ended up just cutting the bottom coil of each pu out of the circuit for him. The hum was back, but it was still a massive improvement.)

I would go with Dave Schwab's suggestion of a much lower overall DCR spec but wired in series. To this day I don't know why Gibson didn't do the same with the P100.

[bea]

In other words, the fact that the coils are wired in parallel really doesn't do much if anything to make the pickup more detailed and articulate.

Fully agreed. In practice, the pickup is fat and "thumpy" - just what You expect from a Mudbucker. It is a little bit more articulate. Really not much, but in that position more or less every pickup will sound dark an mellow.

Series vs. parallel with the P100 is really just a choice between loud mud and mellow mud.

same here.
However: in parallel mode it is almost in balance with the bridge pickup - still louder but not as drastical as usual. That's a REAL advantage, IMO, and of course my main motivation to use parallel coils in that PU - You have a useful intermediate sound if You use both PUs in parallel.