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I watched this video, and I kind of liked the Wilkinson pickups better when played clean. Fuller, whole tonal spectrum, while the SD sounded a little bit thin and weak to me. On overdrive settings, the Wilkinson sounded muddy and harsh in a way. But you can say the same about Fender and Marshall amps, when not tweaked accordingly, right? I mean, I would set the gain a little bit back for the Wilkinson pickups, and if using a single channel amp, I would use a Tube Screamer, or a treble booster. So, my assumptions:
1. Vintage pickups = more high end bite, clearer and more open, better presence and cut in the mix on higher gain settings
2. Hotter pickups = more low end and mids, more output, less electrical noise in the chain, no need for a compressor pedal
So, wouldn't hotter pickups be better for jazz, because they are darker sounding? And yet, SD jazz pickups are in the lower range, around 8k, i.e. more vintage-y/ Also, one could always lower them, and/or back up the volume pot.
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04-19-2018 06:13 PM
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I really dislike hotter pickups. You really can't just roll them back. They don't have the clarity and high end of a lower output pickup and you can't put back something that isn't there. I'm sure they work well for some people but they really don't work for me.
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My personal opinion is that hot pickups have a muddiness and harshness in the mids that is really impossible to dial out. It's not as simple as just rolling off the volume control. Low strings are muddy, and if you 'fix' the muddiness, the high strings are harsh sounding.
There are exceptions - I have a Bill Lawrence L-90 pickup that has quite a high DC reading, but it's extremely transparent and clear sounding. A fantastic jazz guitar pickup. DC readings aren't always an accurate way of gauging the tone or output. Furthermore, I have a floating CC pickup made by Pete Biltoft that only reads at 2.xx k/ohms but the apparent output through the amp is only a fraction less than a typical PAF pickup for example.
It's not hard to get a dark sound from a low output pickup, but getting a boomy high output pickup to sound sweet is very difficult in my experience.
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Even playing my heavy rock I'm not a big fan of hot pickups. I lose nuance with them. Rolling back the volume on many guitars cuts high-end, so that's not really an answer, because hot pickups get their grind on in mids and lower. Roll back the volume and shit gets murky, without cleaning up enough.
Give me some low-winds, like old-school Gibson minihumbuckers, and I can play clean all day long and twice on Sundays. I'll get my heat from the amp or a pedal.
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Even for metal, I don’t like high output pickups. I think they are just too muddy. Instead I use a combination of a Maxon OD9 (same as an Ibanez TS9) and a high gain amplifier, currently an EVH 5150 III.
I also tend to set my pickups fairly low in relation to the strings, making the total output even lower. I prefer these settings no matter what style I’m playing.
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I have a Nik Huber Krautster that has a high output humbucker from Hauessel ... man that thing rocks and it has plenty of sparkle and top end. It even sounds good split. Otherwise I do not have much experience with high output pickups but they are not all equal.
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High output pickups are like the production quality of a rock record from the mid 1990s. Always loud, crushed and cranked, tonally thick and heavy with no dynamic range. Just about anathema for jazz, like most everyone here has said.
Personally I think rock music died circa 1994, with many factors influencing that, production quality of the albums being one of them. But that's another topic altogether!
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Agree with other posters.
To make a vintage pickup dirtier or fuller in the mid-range I find it easy to add EQ boost or crunch with good quality pedals. Dialing back a hotter pickup to clean up the signal is generally less successful.
The only near exception I can positively support concerns the Super 80's pickups on my MIJ 2016 Ibanez Artist 2619 Prestige. It's hotter than vintage pickups, but remains brighter/clearer than models like burstbuckers, and cleans up nicely when rolled off.Last edited by Ray175; 04-20-2018 at 02:04 PM.
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Notice that the SD rock-player endorsed PU are not always high output?
I too, can pile on and say the hot PU usually are not my choice -- that said I do have one guitar (a maple capped, swamp ash strat) that does sound really good with a hot Rio Grande BBQ/Texas HB set. Those same pickups are unbearably muddy in every other guitar I've tried them in, but I like them (a lot) in that one strat.
An example of a low output HB named for a heavy player is the "George Lynch Screamin' Demon" HB, and although I've heard his name plenty I really don't know what he sounds like (and admit to pre-judging that his tone might not fit my present goal.) But, I recently bought that SD SH12 (Lynch Screamin' Demon!) to try in the bridge position in an archtop and a couple semi, and so far I like it. It is, in spite of it's name, a good clear low to moderate output humbucker, suitable for Jazz bridge. Better than a SD JB, IMO.
Odd that the SD "Jazz" HB pickup sucks for jazz, but I can find use for the "Screamin' Demon".
Take a typical overwound high-output HB, pot the heck out of it, use it with a cover, adjusted too close to the strings, and you should rightly expect the dull muddy sound that drives folks to single coils (I've just recently been discovering joy with P90/P92 Fralin, and HCC types, though still have affinity with good HB.)
John
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My cousin Thor has a Dixie Dragon Flamebucker in his Charvel 7 string, and to say it's hot is an understatement. When you turn the guitar volume back, it becomes a mudbucker.
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Interesting that the Benedetto pickups, made by SD, are 'hot' ( 12k dcr) by most standards
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i'm one of those guys who prefer their base tone be with all knobs at 10. i can take it from there to get different shades. never cared for the opposite. even if i like my pots and caps and wiring scheme, i'd rather not. and if you don't like all those, it just won't work for you.
and i'm also in the lower output, paf-y type for pretty much everything. even high gain stuff, generally. high output pickups tend to be sort of one trick ponies to me, and that trick doesn't do me much good most of the time. spoiler alert: that trick isn't jazz. weirdly, it isn't splitting the coils, either. the one pickup i have that may sort of qualify as high output sounds like ass split, whereas my paf-y ones actually sound pretty good. go figure.
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Yes, somehow the SD Benedetto pickups are high output, but still get a great tone without mud, all the way around the volume knob's rotation. Some of it, I'm convinced, has to do with the wiring scheme. The Benedetto wiring scheme gives the same tone, or very close, with all volume knob settings, it doesn't get darker as you back it off as Gibsons do. I've rewired my Eastman to the Benedetto method with good results, and I wired my Wu that way also. It sounds much better to me.
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most hot humbuckers in the 10k+ range use thinner #43 wire and often use higher gauss ceramic/ferrite magnets
classic humbucker is #42 wire and alnico mags
big difference in spec, and therefore tone..no matter how you roll back your guitars controls
rolling back your controls does not change the magnetic interaction of pickup and string
cheers
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Franz, DCR figures are NOT equivalent of output.
Originally Posted by Franz 1997
Those figurs are the result of using thinner wire to build smaller coils, as part of the intended design, both tone- and output-wise.
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No, of course not; some 2 or 3k DCR CC pickups have a HB-like output. Inductance, wire gauge etc all come into the rather complex picture. What I was pointing out is that DCR alone isn't an indicator of muddy, overwound tone, otherwise Benedetto would be unlikely to use such a configuration. Originally Posted by LtKojak
But the DCR reading IS often used to indicate a "hot" pickup, as in this thread.
In any event, I believe that some Benedetto pickups are centre- pointed humbuckers.
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Stronger pickups bring some extra compression with them, and to me feel like you re losing some detail and dynamics. Even for recording or an overdriven guitar sound I prefer a lower output pickup along with a booster or other box if need be. I like strong (or even active) pickups for distortion, or for some session work where you are happy to sacrifice some personality for a more consistent sound in all levels and rooms.
It seems to me that, the higher the playing volume, the better a low output pickup will work
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Thank you, guys! So I rolled the dice and ordered an A5 set in the range of 8-8.5. I guess those would be ranked as medium output pickups.
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One trick I learnt long ago to help clear up a muddy pickup is to lower the body and raise the polepieces. This tends to clean up the mids a bit -- but it's of limited use, and obviously not useful for adjustments on the fly. Originally Posted by sgosnell
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The thread title shows the irony of the situation.
In earth orbit if you want to get closer to something ahead of you, it is necessary to slow down, drop to a lower orbit, and catch up to the object. If you speed up, you move to higher orbit and drift farther away from the object.
Similarly, you can not really “roll back” a hotter pickup to get the sound of the lower-inductance coil of a less-hot wind.
You can, however, roll back a less-hot PU to get a similar sound to that of a hotter wind.
Hilariously enough, the shredder guy Yingy-wingy Malmsteen mentioned that you pick the PU based on the sound you want, not the output level.
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A couple more thoughts on this:
What might work with a hot pickup (haven't tried this personally) but I only just thought of is to have a switch to go between parallel and series - perhaps a hot/muddy pickup in series might clean up nicely in parallel.
A popular use of the Bill Lawrence Q-Filter is for cleaning up hot pickups. On "10" the sound is the normal pickups sound, on "0" it's very acoustic sounding. To my ears it approximates the sound you would get if you could 'magically' remove winds off the pickup.
I have always wanted to wire a Q-Filter to an archtop, I think it would be really good for rhythm sounds.
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Rolling back a hot wind only increases the lows. Originally Posted by ptchristopher3
Clarity, heat, and girth? Install a P-90 or an old-school minihumbucker. Outside that, you can get two of three, but not all three.
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I’ve read that the “Q-filter” is a series RLC circuit. If you replace the capacitor of a typical guitar treble control with the Q-filter it becomes a mid-control. If the resonant frequency and bandwidth of the Q-filter are similar to the resonance of your overwound pickup it might help dial that resonance out. But if the overwound pickup lacks in treble, the Q-filter won’t put that back. I don’t have experience with the Q-filter and can’t find any specs on it, but I think that’s how it works.
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He was right. If you have a pickup you like but need more signal to the amp, add another stage of amplification. Overwinding may increase the signal, but it also changes the frequency response. If you like the frequency response of an overwound pickup, that’s great, but don’t overwind to get more gain then try to dial it out with a filter. Originally Posted by ptchristopher3
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