Good PAF tone

[Possum]

....

There's one pickup maker who's name I can't remember who only uses alnico 3 in both positions. Never tried it in neck before, its weird stuff, it kills in my Broadcaster pickup like the originals were but my first shot at doing strat pickups with them it was too bright overall, which surprised me. Its hard to generalize about different alnicos sometimes, I have 3 different alnico 2 bars from 3 different companies and they are all radically different sounding.

One thing about having a real PAF sounding bridge, even if you think its thin is it makes the middle position have that sweet BB King sorta tone which goes away alot if you put a real beefy fat bridge in, same thing on a strat, I've figured out how to really tone the bridge down with some tricks I figured out but you totally lose decent quack in the 2 postion...

[RedHouse]

... The problem I have is that if I set the amp to make the bridge sound the way I like, than the neck sounds woofy. That drives me crazy. That's why I like my bridge thicker so I can eq my amp to the neck and the bridge sounds good. Nuts huh?...

NO you're not nuts, this is a problem most players have, many don't realize it or ignore it.

This is the same problem I had when I was a gig'ing musician, drove me nuts until I wired my gig'ing guitars in stereo and used two heads into one 1960A cabinet (which was also wired stereo) this was the only way I could get the whole system dialed in right for both pickups.

Nowadays I just put up with it and don't really use the stereo approach very often anymore, but I really feel your pain, in my case these days it's specially rough on my Strat's, I just love the neck pickup sound (Jimi/Robin/Stevie) and of course when the system is set up, just right, for the neck pickup ...the bridge pickup sounds horrible (and vise-versa).

[fjgaston]

Hey, as I wrote before, I have the same problem but it's my neck pickup that sound weird because I set the sound to have the best sound with my bridge pickup.
But when I play it through a very good amplifier without any effect, in my vintage amp (1969 sound city 50+) the pickups are really better matched.
But as I still play the bridge pickup as my normal sound and use the neck pickup for special sounds (special effects ??? )
When I use my overdrive (Boss SD1) the pickups doesn't seem to be well matched at all.
I tried vintage pedals replicas, with NOS capacitors, with the same pickups, and vintage marshall amp, the pickups are also well matched in that configuration.
I think I'm going to buy vintage or NOS effect.

[Weldaar]

I kind of have my problem solved. Sort of! Because I like my bridge thick and my neck to be kind of PAFish, I set my amp to favor the neck, then have a bridge wound to give me the thickness I like. But as Dave said, I will lose that sweet middle position tone. What to do, what to do? I have both pickups I like, but again, I lose the sweet middle.

[David Schwab]

But as Dave said, I will lose that sweet middle position tone. What to do, what to do? I have both pickups I like, but again, I lose the sweet middle.

I have a real overwound bridge humbucker on my Charvel body/Tele neck frankenstrat, and a single coil sounding pickup at the neck, and I also lose that good in between balance. So two things I did was to install a series parallel switch for the bridge pickup, so I can switch it to a cleaner brighter tone when needed, and also on the center position on the switch, the bridge pickup runs though a cap to roll off some low end, and a trim pot to lower its level so it mixes with the neck pickup better. At some point I'm going to do a five way switch with different caps in the 2 & 4 positions.

This is tricky to do with a LP type switch, but you can instal a push pull pot that does the switching. So when you want a thinner tone from the neck, you pull up on your pot.

[Weldaar]

This is tricky to do with a LP type switch, but you can instal a push pull pot that does the switching. So when you want a thinner tone from the neck, you pull up on your pot.

You are a smart man. I would put it on the bridge though to thin that out so when I use the middle position, that would make the bridge less therefore a sweeter middle. No?

[David Schwab]

You are a smart man. I would put it on the bridge though to thin that out so when I use the middle position, that would make the bridge less therefore a sweeter middle. No?

It would make the bridge sound like a thinner pickups, so yes, they would blend better. You can experiment with cap values. .002 MF is a good place to start. Larger values like .005 or even .02 give more low end, smaller values are thinner. You can also put the cap and a resistor in parallel.

[Weldaar]

Wouldn't that lower the overall pickup tone though? I want to keep the thick bridge for when I use the bridge, just thin it for when I use the middle.

[Possum]

....

A muddy neck is a problem because modern companies don't make buckers the way PAFs were made or use those principles, when profit became more important than making them the way Seth Lover designed them. Once you know what he did you just design the neck to work the way modern players would like, to work with the bridge and not be dull and boomy when you flip to the neck. The bottom line is can you put your neck pickup on an LCR meter and wind it to stay out of the "mud" zone. You can even do this with StewMac junk parts, you may have to wind them lower than you would normally think about. You don't lose much power doing that and the tone cleans up. I've done neck buckers, covered at around 6K and they don't sound wimpy at all and just gain in clarity, well to a point; they won't ever hit the clarity that a PAF will, thats really what drove me into doing all this research and getting where I did with the new set, wanting that clarity and characteristic tone. Unfortunately this stuff is expensive, I'm dreading running out of the stuff because its an expensive restocking deal :-)

[Weldaar]

Dave, I like the way the neck sounds, I like the way the bridge sounds. I don't like the middle position very much. I don't want to sacrifice the thickness of the bridge for a sweet middle. You know what I mean? I don't know much about the theory of a pickup, I just know what I like
Maybe push-pull is the way to have the best of both worlds. I don't play through a Fender, I like the Marshall tones. I have a Traynor/Plexi and an old Crate. Both don't have very good cleans. That fine with me though. I am looking to get a Reinhardt amp someday.

[David Schwab]

Wouldn't that lower the overall pickup tone though? I want to keep the thick bridge for when I use the bridge, just thin it for when I use the middle.

I'm talking about switching the cap in for the middle position. On my guitar it's automatic, but I'm using a Strat type switch. If you used a pull switch to do it, you would also have your regular tone from that pickup.

I like to get two different tones from my bridge pickup, a brighter thinner tone for general playing, and a louder thicker tone for soloing. I don't use both pickups all that often, I like one or the other better most of the time. But I like both pickups better when they don't overlap as much, so the cap helps with that.

[Possum]

...

I suppose you could rig a switch that would turn on one coil in the neck and one in the bridge to get that sweet tone, but heck i'm not a fan of alot of switching options. The most I've ever done is a push pull pot for out of phase switching with P90s, which is a very useful tone for me.

I haven't tried doing a hotter bridge pickup with this metal yet and thats my next test here real quick. I think the metal actually accentuates that sweet middle position tone no matter how hot the pickups are, it was one of the first things that struck me when I did the first set to about the same specs I use with other buckers, suddenly the middle position was doing the BB King Zeppelin tone without even trying. Thats why I made that commnet on the MLP forum that WB's pickups sound great but they don't sound like PAFs especially in the middle position, and that is one of their primary characteristics. I'm going to do the new bridge test to 8.6K which is supposedly what Peter Green's bridge was, but that number is almost meaningless without knowing the diameter of the wire. But I am betting the middle still has that sweet thing going with the fatter bridge in there...

[MattT]

There's one pickup maker who's name I can't remember who only uses alnico 3 in both positions.

Tim White?

I've also struggled with the LP problem of incompatible bridge/neck tones. I think a LP exacerbates this problem...it's not as bad on an SG or even a 335 IME. I agree that you can underwind the neck and/or overwind the bridge to get them more compatible. Then you can also play with magnets and matched vs. mis-matched coils (and degrees of mis-matching), etc. In the past when I tried (full strength) magnets swaps I could never settle on one magnet type for both the neck and bridge...the main problem being a full-strength A5 in the neck was too powerful and boomy in the bass (top end is nice though). In any case, I think it can be done. Warren Haynes seems to be able to work with it among others.

I didn't play guitar way back then but it seems to me that Strats/LPs must have been more compatible way back then. From playing more modern guitars my impression was always that LPs were powerful and midrangey but not as bright (sometimes downright dull) and Strats were less powerful but scooped and bright (often downright harsh/brassy/etc.). I still don't really know but I've been tweeking my main Strat and LP to be more compatible (brighter/twangier LP and warmer/mellower Strat) and each one is sounding better on it's own along the way (almost like it's how they were supposed to sound but again..I don't really know).

[Possum]

...

Not Tim White, who by the way quit making pickups. Its Peter Florance of Voodoo Pickups. There aren't any sound clips there so haven't a clue what his stuff sounds like.
LP's are fat chunks of wood but listen to some old Yardbirds, there' nothing midrange and boomy about those guitars, those PAFs really cut. I'm using degaussed alnico 5 in my test neck versions and it works beautifully, manufactured parts don't work with that grade of alnico though. Listen to clip five, nothing boomy or midrange heavy there, its not the guitar's fault its what the pickups are made of. to get that kind of tone you can't just change magnets you have to change everything in the magnetic circuit to close to what PAFs used, you can't buy parts anywhere near that stuff and few manufacturers even try. I think somewhere along the line tastes changed and players didn't want PAF cutting tones, they wanted dark midrangey tones I guess, for years I hated humbuckers, the only guitar I ever played with buckers I liked was a '64 SG I had, now I realize it basically had PAF parts pickups in it, the other LP's I played over the years just sounded like total mud to me. What got me interested in pursuing humbucker technology was watching Chris Cain rip on a 335, found out later Joe Pass or some famous jazz guy gave him some real PAFs to use, thats where his awesome tone comes from, so that sent me on a quest for sure :-)

[MattT]

I tried a set of Voodoos...I think they were called '59' or something...I get some of the p'ups I tried confused so it may have been them. IIRC they sounded OK but not enough for me to keep them...I vaguely recall there being something 'weird' about the sound. Like they sounded fine in certain conditions but not so much in others...maybe a strange frequency notch or something...I think I preferred the Timmys. Never swapped any magnets in them either.

to get that kind of tone you can't just change magnets you have to change everything in the magnetic circuit to close to what PAFs used, you can't buy parts anywhere near that stuff and few manufacturers even try.

That probably explains the 'close but no cigar' award that some of these p'ups should get. You might focus on one aspect and finally get it right (or very close to it) only to find something else is not quite right...then focus on that aspect and...rinse and repeat.