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Do hotter pickups have any benefit beyond being louder?
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06-12-2025 10:29 AM
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Read up on the MFD (Magnetic Field Design) pickups that Leo Fender designed for G&L guitars and basses. They have huge, powerful ceramic magnetics with a low winding count (I think), paired with what he called a PTB system. PTB stands for Passive Treble Bass and consists of volume, treble cut, and bass cut.
I have a G&L bass with MFDs. The trick to using it is to keep the knobs low, and rarely on 10. Right now I think I have the treble on 3, bass on 5, and the volume at 6 or 7.
His idea was to make the pickups hot and then use the PTB system to shape the output.
Here's a pretty good overview:
G&L MFD Pickups - Leo Fender's Greatest Innovation? - Andertons Blog
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A pickup with more output might drive the input stage of an amp harder, typically yielding more distortion. That can be either a good thing or bad thing, depending on what you want.
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Pickup output strength is a property (not necessarily a benefit).
EQ response is another property that typically is affected by the setting of the guitar Volume control (low guitar volume settings typically result in treble loss)
Preamp gain is a property of your amp and this affects the tone (clean as well as distorted). The strength of the guitar signal going into the amp Input will affect output volume and consequently the setting of the amp volume control(s) and this is going to affect the tone (EQ and texture). Most amps sound better when amp volume can be turned up about halfway.
Low impedance amp Input jack is a feature of some amps. This facilitates clean performance of the amp when combined with hot pickups.
Pickup adjustment is a user setup parameter. The objective is to calibrate the guitar output signal so that it meets the amp characteristics as well as your desired tone. Low output pickups are typically adjusted closer to the strings, hot pickups may have to be set lower, if possible.
Clean amp output depends on amp volume setting, not so much the pickup output strength.
Distortion is a tone character atypical in old school jazz, but a commodity in Fusion. Hot pickups adjusted close to the strings will produce more distortion.
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I've used everything from stock Tele and Strat pickups to Duncan Hot Rails and DiMarzio Blaze to EMG actives. I think there are a few differences worth noting. Remember that magnets differ, wire gauge and windings differ, bobbins differ, some are potted and some are not, etc etc. So you can't generalize too much.
Effects sound different with different input signal levels. Pickups that favor mids sound different through many effects from those that have extended highs or other resonse peaks. IME, disstortion effects are harsher the more highs they get. I get a tighter, smoother O/D and more sustain from my Zendrive clone with the active EMG pickup in my LP (very high output but balanced response) than I do with the garden variety Duncan 'buckers in my '90s ESP. But the DiMarzio Blaze made it a bit buzzy. The Duncan Quarter Pounder (a Strat style SC that measures 14.1) in my Kubicki Express has a different sound through all of my devices than any other pickup I've ever had. It pushes O/D to new levels but makes them sound a bit less smooth. It'll drive small tube amps to the edge of breakup much earlier than any other pickup I've used. There's less clean headroom with small amps of any kind.
I also find that most high output pickups tend to be a bit more midrange / upper midrange focused, with a bit less detail in the highs. This gives everything from distortion to phase effects a slightly different sound and a slightly different response to the controls compared to low output pickups.
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High-impedance winds tend to have a lower resonant frequency. That quality seems to be valued by two camps which aren't usually in the same paragraph: Hard-core metal players and jazzers.
The Duncan Benedetto B6 has super-hot coils but a) the blades are angled to attenuate the lowest strings and b) there's about 1/4" of epoxy cap on top, ensuring that the guts of the pickup simply cannot get too close to the strings. The result is a high-output, darker-sounding unit with the output attenuated to normal levels by physical distance between the strings and coil.
You could achieve some of the same result with any overwound pickup by dropping it far away from the strings. But you'd get tempted to raise it up . . . boom: You are now In The White Room!
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Eddie Van Halen once said in an interview that he does t like overly hot wound pickups. As it affects the tone in a negative way. And even though I don’t play his style of music, I’ve found that to be very useful advice over the many years of pickups swaps.
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Pickups are microphones and like mics they each have a different voicing. Different mics will react differently at different distances from the sound source. Every pickup is a crap shoot when it comes to whether it will offer a voice that you are seeking for your unique playing style. There are no rules. Hot pickups can be very annoying, or they can do some amazing things that lower output pickups cannot.
Originally Posted by LJP
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This is a bit off topic, but I can’t resist commenting. The treble control on the PTB system is conventional. The bass control consists of a potentiometer in parallel with a capacitor inserted in the signal path. When the resistance of the pot is set to zero the bass control has no effect, and as the resistance increases there is a bass cut. So it makes sense to pair this control with a bass-heavy pickup. Originally Posted by supersoul
Turns out Framus was already doing this in the 1960s. I’ve got a 1968 Framus BL-15 with the same tone control circuit and bass-heavy single coil pickups. The bass control works well. G&L’s pickups may have been innovative, but the only innovation in the PTB system was giving it a proprietary name.
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I was tempted to refer you to the writings of Bill Lawrence, but it would be like giving you a wiring diagram when you asked how to turn on a TV. Probably much more than you wanted to know. If you want to run down that rabbit hole, it's out there. And there are forum members here who can write you a dissertation and do the math in front of you. Originally Posted by LJP
Bill Lawrence, sort of the granddaddy of the boutique pickup industry, focused less on impedance (an electrical property, easily measured in Ohms with a cheap multimeter from Home Depot) and more on inductance (an electromagnetic property, given in Henries and not easily measured by cheap tools you can buy at Home Depot) when talking about pickup performance. A "hotter" pick up will generally have both higher impedance and higher inductance; pickups with higher inductance tend to produce less high frequency information in the output.
For jazz players, that tends to mean a warmer, darker tone which we usually like. This is compounded by being able to roll off the volume knob while maintaining a good signal to the amp, which also tends to roll off high frequency information. For jazz guitar, that's the other benefit of a "hotter" pickup.
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I usually associate higher output pickups with a darker, potentially muddy sound, but it's not necessarily the case.
DC resistance isn't a great measure of output either. Example being something like a Dearmond Dynasonic which generally has a DC resistance greater than a PAF humbucker for example, but the actual perceived output is pretty similar, or even a bit less.... same goes for a Charlie Christian pickup, with its larger gauge of wire will have a very low DC resistance, but the actual output is pretty similar to a regular humbucker.
My personal preference is for lower output pickups - it's easy to take treble off and boost the mids for a thicker sound. Trying to tame a muddy 'high output' pickup on the other hand is a lot harder.
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I've always liked *slightly* hotter pickups, as I feel they are more responsive, meaning if I play them softer they are cleaner, and if I hit them harder they are dirtier. It's subtle, but it's there. Low-wind pickups always make me feel like I'm fighting the guitar to get a sound out of it, like I HAVE to hit it harder, and I don't like that. There's a sweet-spot tho: high end pickups I also find less responsive, because they are never really clean.
There's a little more to it than that of course (pole magnet vs bar magnet, pole magnet size, etc), but that's the gist of it.
And, for certain types of music like higher gain stuff, I LIKE hotter pickups, for example the Seymour Duncan JB which is wound up to about 14K I think.
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So years ago I replaced the original pickups in my Benedetto Bambino with less powerful Manluis P.A.F. Humbuckers.
It was like taking the blanket off the overall tone. A huge overall improvement i.m.o.
I did buy a more balanced set with the Landmark P.AF. for the neck position.And a Hot Rod 59 for the bridge. I’ve used this set in several guitars with great success and highly recommend Mick McGuiness at Manluis to all out there. Very fair pricing as well!
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I don't have a lot of data points from personal experience with this question. Comparing (by ear, not oscilloscope) A5 ~9K humbuckers to A2~8K pickups in the same guitar, the former has a distinct upper-mid peak, boomier low end, more prominent attack. The latter has a broader, less peaky mid-range, a greater sense of detail and clarity, and softer attack. Relative loudness is hard to gauge because of the envelope and texture differences -- each is both louder and quieter in some respects than the other. They each also interact with different input circuits a little differently. But this is all pretty subtle. Plus input circuits have knobs, and the ear tends to direct how the fingers dial them to a desired result. Shrug.
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One thing I used to tell other guitarists when I was younger, is that you can always add fuzz or distortion to your sound with a pedal, but if the pickups are putting out some fuzz or distortion by themselves due to high output, there's no "clean up my sound" pedals out there. Medium to low output pickups give you a lot more flexibility, IMHO. That said, I had a DiMarzio Super Distortion in the bridge spot of my LPC throughout the 80's and absolutely loved it. I don't think they are considered too high output these days though.
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The super distortion is just a great pickup and much more versatile than many people would think. Josh Optical does a really great in depth review of them, showing how they can be used with a cleaner tone. This might be a video for the OP to watch if only as a demonstration of how high pickup output can work well for more than just rock music. Originally Posted by jim777
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The Fender Bass VI has the horribly named "strangle switch," which is fixed bass cut circuit to be engaged. Originally Posted by KirkP
Leo Fender has a patent for the MFD pickups, so I think they're beyond just being really hot. The magnetic field is shaped in a certain way, and the coils are underwound from what is normal. This lowers the inductance, which flattens out the pickup's resonance. The Volume, bass-cut, and treble-cut pots are then supposed to be used more aggressively in order to shape the sound more.
All of this I am regurgitating from the G&L Leo Fender fan sites. I don't know enough about electronics to say if any of it checks out. PTS is obviously a marketing term!
The L-2000 bass I have also has a switchable preamp, that can also have a treble boost. It's kinda crazy, because the pickups are super powerful on their own, then add in a preamp, then cut all the knobs to just let thru what you want. I do know that it's the only bass I have, and that I don't want another bass. It's quite good for recording because of how flexible the tone is.
It's good to know about the Framus BL-15. Is it similar to a 335 shaped hollowbody, like a Casino or ES330? I found your hand drawn circuit on another thread here. I've attached a schematic I found of Mr. Fender's PTB circuit. The bass-cut is identical.
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