Neck pickup reversing a quick mod to get a brighter tone ?

[feet]

for better or worse, the neck pup position is sort of the point with the byrdland. that's what makes it what it is. you can get more traditional sounds by picking further up from the bridge, but most aren't comfortable with that. i wish i had a second one, with the pup in the standard location.

the last few frets are pretty worthless, though. :/

[PTChristopher2]

Yeah Feet,

I understand that we associate as "classic" the quirks of PU placement with the guitar design, be it the 175 or the Byrd.

Chris

[vinlander]

Interesting to read all these replies!
Just to let you know operation was somehow successful, parallel bracings happens to clear half an inch on each side of the humbucker so no top integrity compromised. Unfortunately my silly 6th string decided to unwind on me as I was stringing back for testing...bummer, I will need to go in town tomorrow to get a 6th or a new set of 13-56...
I ended up putting the pup somewhere between the imaginary 22 and 23rd fret if it will change anything...
I postpone the tests to tomorrow when I will get the string.

[PTChristopher2]

Nice woodwork. So you are maybe ~4mm south of the location of a Broadway neck PU.

In my opinion, the actual issue of top integrity is minor at best in the neck PU locale. But nice to see you had the room anyway. Now hacking through the braces in the bridge PU location would be another thing, so close to the bridge.

I hope it all works out well when 100% done. Looks great.

Chris

[jzucker]

reversing a humbucker makes no difference in sound. It doesn't get brighter. Both coils and both sets of magnets are still summing in series the magnetic vibration of the strings.

[palindrome]

reversing a humbucker makes no difference in sound. It doesn't get brighter. Both coils and both sets of magnets are still summing in series the magnetic vibration of the strings.

Invariably so?

http://www.dimarzio.com/faq#55/62/283

[cosmic gumbo]

No mention of Wes and his reversed pickup?

[oldane]

I would have loved the Byrdland if they had left the fiddly bottom off the FB and also knocked off a fret or two. This would have let them put the neck PU in a far more all-around useful place to my ears.

Chris

Now that you mention that, I actually instructed Tom to sacrifice a fret or two on the neck extenstion, if needed, to have the PU where I wanted it. I never play at those high frets.

[newsense]

Beats me why builders don't mount the pickups on sliding do-dahs so you can adjust the position on the fly. And whilst they are at it, a neat spring-loaded gadget to allow you to pull and twist for easy reversal.

Remember, you heard it here first. When Carvin start offering these options, you can all support me in my claim for royalties.

[Franz 1997]

reversing a humbucker makes no difference in sound. It doesn't get brighter. Both coils and both sets of magnets are still summing in series the magnetic vibration of the strings.

Not to be picky, but I think you mean both sets of pole pieces. There's only one magnet in a HB pickup.

[oldane]

Beats me why builders don't mount the pickups on sliding do-dahs so you can adjust the position on the fly. And whilst they are at it, a neat spring-loaded gadget to allow you to pull and twist for easy reversal.

Remember, you heard it here first. When Carvin start offering these options, you can all support me in my claim for royalties.

Actually, Gibson offered the sliding with the Grabber bass back in the 1970s. So regrettably no royalties for you...... ;-)

[palindrome]

Actually, Gibson offered the sliding with the Grabber bass back in the 1970s. So regrettably no royalties for you...... ;-)

The royalties actually go to Tal Farlow:

http://www.premierguitar.com/article...gibson-model-1

[TonyB56]

No mention of Wes and his reversed pickup?

On his Live in '65 concert he has the pickup the other way round, he might have turned it to get the adjustable pole pieces under the the harmonic, with a single humbucker there is no phasing problem with the bridge pickup.

[Franz 1997]

There's no phasing problem with 2 pickups, if you reverse one pickup in the mounting.

[newsense]

The royalties actually go to Tal Farlow:

http://www.premierguitar.com/article...gibson-model-1

Seems like the guys at Premier Guitar are unnecessarily skeptical: "Thankfully, one of his early designs was rejected: a pickup that could slide along the pickguard on a track rail to achieve the tonal variances otherwise made possible by two pickups" and "Never a company to completely abandon a bad idea, Gibson introduced the sliding pickup concept in 1973 on the Grabber bass, with deservedly poor results. (Gibson Electrics – The Classic Years, Hal Leonard Corp., 1994; page 99)"

Great concept, poorly implemented in my opinion.

My latest embodiment (that's patent speak, you know) will include a whammy bar attachment so that you can slide the pickup back and forwards, mid-note, giving a purely mechanical wah-wah effect ! What's not to like ?

[feet]

Yeah Feet,

I understand that we associate as "classic" the quirks of PU placement with the guitar design, be it the 175 or the Byrd.

Chris

i suspect that you, me and the whole of the world would prefer them with the neck pup in the "proper" spot, but between us, there's something about the perversity of the placement (and the idea of it) that speaks to me. and it looks adorable to see the pups kinda squished together. but people have been paying for them all these years, so what do we know?

now that i think of it, a byrdland with standard pup placement, 20 frets and a regular scale (or even the long scale) would be the coolest guitar ever. they've come close, but that configuration hasn't existed, as far as i can recall.

i would imagine a floating pup attached to the end of the neck with extend-o slide-y tabs wouldn't be a big deal to pull off. or maybe a bracket/rail that affixes to the underside of the pickguard?

[oldane]

My latest embodiment (that's patent speak, you know) will include a whammy bar attachment so that you can slide the pickup back and forwards, mid-note, giving a purely mechanical wah-wah effect ! What's not to like ?

What's not to like? Well, it violates the "KISS" principle ("Keep It Simple Stupid" :-) ). What can go wrong will surely go wrong at some point. But what's not there can't break.

In addition it would introduce many potential sources for annoying buzzes. Other threads have shown how many problems almost all archtop players have with finding the causes for and fixing buzzes from even a single fixed PU.

[bananafist]

Late to the party, (too late in fact!) but if you unscrew the adjustable pole pieces on a humbucker you are left with just the concealed ones 'reading' the strings and that will give a brighter more single coil sound. If you decide its not for you, just reinsert the adjustable polepieces and you are back to stock. I read somewhere that Johnny Smith used to do this with his personal JS floating pickups to get a brighter sound. Wish I could remember where I read it!

[vinlander]

Nice woodwork. So you are maybe ~4mm south of the location of a Broadway neck PU.

In my opinion, the actual issue of top integrity is minor at best in the neck PU locale. But nice to see you had the room anyway. Now hacking through the braces in the bridge PU location would be another thing, so close to the bridge.

I hope it all works out well when 100% done. Looks great.

Chris

Thank you, actually I did all without power tools, just some hand tools and patience.

[Jimmy Mack]

reversing a humbucker makes no difference in sound. It doesn't get brighter. Both coils and both sets of magnets are still summing in series the magnetic vibration of the strings.

Editing in response to the above quoted post:

My ears disagree. As I see the photo of Wes with the reversed p/up on his L5, I have to wonder, did his ears hear a diff.?

To repeat my experience stated earlier, I wanted a snappier tone from my L5 neck p/up so I (way before seeing the Wes photo ) reversed my own p/up. I was after the "Wes" tone. It got me much closer to that goal.

[Jimmy Mack]

And notice the height of his adjustable pole pieces. His p/up resembles mine. Must be something working there!

[helios]

Thanks to palindrome for posting the Dimarzio article! Reversing a unbalanced neck humbucker (screw coil having more windings than slug coil) will produce a "brighter" tone. Gibson Burstbuckers, Lollar imperials, Fralin Unbuckers are all non-symmetrical/unbalanced by design. The reversal sounded brighter with a Fralin Unbucker in my Epi Byrdland. Never tried it with a symmetrical humbucker.

[TonyB56]

And notice the height of his adjustable pole pieces. His p/up resembles mine. Must be something working there!

The only reason it sounds brighter is because the the screw pole pieces are closer to the bridge than before similar to moving the pickup back towards the bridge. The adjustable pole pieces are there to balance the string volumes the closer you can get the string volumes to each other the better the guitar will sound, 90%+ of guitarists never touch them, if you look closely at videos of top players you can see the different heights of the pole pieces, the top E is usually quite high and close to the strings, the B is below the cover the G is nearly as high as the top E, the D is just above the cover and the A and bottom E are about flush. Screw the top E pole piece up but make sure the string doen't rattle on it then turn your amp on and adjust the others up and down until the string volumes are as close as you can get them the guitar will sound much better. I saw this posted in a forum once, the guy said line the slots of the pole pieces up like this / \ / \ / \ it will balance the magnetic field a real moron.

[PTChristopher2]

Hi Tony,

In my opinion it is rarely a good idea to go with "I read somewhere" as a rationale. Even rarer would be the advisability of characterising via the term "moron". I make enough moronic post comments to have it catch up eventually.

Some might even see a single post to be a self-contained lesson in the concept.

Do you have measured data that shows that the screw coil has more end-net signal strength than the slug coil?

This would be interesting input on this subject and the subject of leveling the HB PU vs. the strings in general.

Chris

[D.G.]

I have experience with unbalanced humbuckers and in the neck position, if you flip the pickup so the hotter coil is closer to the bridge, the sound will brighten slightly, but you'll get far more mileage simply turning up the treble on your amp half a notch. You'll also get a slightly brighter tone out of a humbucker that has no covers or by removing all of the screw polepieces. But all of these little tricks will not get a humbucker even remotely close to a single coil sound like a p90 or CC. There is a clarity and snap on the low A and E strings with a single coil pup that you won't find with any humbucker, including the strat "noiseless" types such as Kinman, Dimarzio, Fender SCN, etc.

But, it really all depends on what you are really trying to accomplish. Maybe reversing the pickup or removing the polepieces will give you the exact amount of treble clarity you're looking for. It's all up to you