Tweaking pickups, MikeM style

MikeM · 2013-08-07T20:16:11+00:00

Hey folks I know most people aren't that hands on, and prefer their techs to do some stuff. However for those of you that don't mind putting some time in to get exactly what you want, replacing, modding and tweaking pickups is something that has one of the biggest effects on your tone. I bought some pickups from Andre, on the clearout special and actually, my opinion of Tonerider has increased a bit. They're pretty well made! Anycase, I got an A4 set and a Rocksong bridge. This first post is going to be detailing my work on the neck of the A4. It's specced as a 7.9k "hotrod 60's humbucker". I'd say this is pretty accurate. It's a decent spec, although a bit hot. I believe fundamentally, you can always turn treble down, but you can't restore treble detail that has been lost. Because of this, I typically prefer bright pickups (And bright guitars). Nowadays after using really hot neck pickups for a long while, I've realised that A. One should set up their tone control properly. Try using a cap that's around 1/10th of your current value, at the bottom of the sweep, it'll actually still be usable. B. 7.5k is as hot as a neck pickup needs to be, unless you are in a GnR tribute band. So here are the first few pics. Fancy shmancy new pickups fresh in their boxes. Ok so firstly, lets see what the coils each read, going to check the screw coil first, as I prefer them being hotter to emphasise that cool ass 24th harmonic neck tone. Hmmm, 4.1k. That's fine as long as the slug coil is 3.8k as per the specs. Also 4.1k? Strange. I'd say maybe it's the temperature difference, but it's quite moderate here. It's not even 5% off, no worries. So what do they add up to together? Hehehe, that's pretty curious. Didn't think that soldering etc can add up to 120 ohms. Well it's pretty much too high for me. Not bothering to measure capacitance because I know what these sound like. And I can't measure the henries cause I don't have the means to. Now before you continue the thread. I'm pretty dumb and I do dumb things. If you're dumb like me, there's a chance you break pickups when you do things like this. If you attempt this, be careful, work slowly and methodically and most importantly, don't be dumb. Firstly, unscrew the baseplate screws. Pop the baseplate off, slowly pressing on the screws from the coil and feeding the wire through the baseplate. Wow, lots of wax. I'd say that's disappointing, but this is a production pickup that needs to work for the masses. This is FAR too much wax if you don't play with much drive, but they do it so as to avoid any kind of issues for folks that do want to crank the gain. I'm not fond of all of it, so scraping it off. Then I opened up the wires from the coils. This is where shit gets serious. Be gentle, don't treat it like a baby, cause you can kinda knock babies around and stuff, if you knock this coil around, bye bye pickup. Separated the slug coil. Far too hot for me. I like a nice big mismatch, the different resonant frequencies makes for a better sounding pickup. Now after removing all the protective tape, I gently got a hold of both wires. This is the slightly impressive bit for me. I killed a pup a while back by breaking the beginning coil wire. It usually comes out of the bottom of the coil, through the square hole. What TR have done is have beginning lie underneath all the winds. This holds it relatively tight and gives you a small chance of recovering the pup if you do break it. Then I began to unravel it. There are a couple thousand turns on this. The wire is marginally wider than a human hair, thinner than a beard hair though ? How I start it off is to wrap it around my hand, and try to keep my fingers roughly the same circumference as a bobbin. Then I do that for a couple of hundred turns until most of the wax and glue is off the pup, and from there I pull perpendicular to the face of the bobbin, you can get wire off MUCH faster this way. And that's where I have stopped. After cooling down, the pickup is reading 3.33k, which along with 4.11k of the screw coil brings me almost spot on to my target of 7.45k. In fact it might read that once assembled again. More in the next installment ?

Chocklit_Thunda

peterleroux wrote Thanks MikeM, this is really interesting.

Do you use any heat to unpot the coils, or just a bit of (careful) force?

Hey Peter
You can't really ever unpot a coil. Unless you "boil" it in a solution but that's dangerous for the coil. You can remove some of the wax with a blow drier but that only gets the wax out to a certain depth. Some guys swear by it giving the coils a more open airy sound like you get with unpotted pickups, others dismiss it.
The excess wax on the bottom between the slugs and magnet can be pulled off with a bit of force and a tad more care around the coils ?

AlanRatcliffe

Most efficient method I've found of removing excess wax is leaving it on some paper towels on the back seat of a car on a hot day. ? But you can never really "unpot" a pickup short of having it rewound.

MikeM

Yup. Alan's correct. Otherwise you can heat a stove up to around 60c and put it in there wrapped up in paper towels.

However, don't waste your time. Rather just get a decent pup ? Minimal gains to be had, in fact you probably won't even notice a difference. At best, you'll notice some difference between a quick, light wax and a heavy one. Going from heavy to a bit less heavy, I say it's not worth the hassle.

peterleroux

Thanks, I was more wondering if you needed to heat the wax to start unwinding the coils or if you could just scrape it off cold and start reeling it off

MikeM

Nah, just be gentle with the first few hundred turns (If you're undwinding, it doesn't matter if it breaks, as long as you can recover the end).

Paddy

Hey Mike

A few Questions

Concerning the "roll control" that you get on some of Trev Wilkinsons guitars, and other manufacturer, which gradually removes one coil from a humbucker until its coil split. If I nudge the control a bit off 10, am I theoretically doing what you do by removing a small amount of windings from one of the coils?

After reading this post I went to my guitar with a new found sense of interest in its roll control wondering if what you did to your pickup, is being done by that control.

Secondly, what kind of an effect does moving the screw pole pieces do to the humbucker? Does it increase the output of that coil over the other one? Or does it just effect the tone response of the pickup?

And would there be any hard and fast rules for adjusting the screw pole pieces?

Regards

MikeM

It's better know as a spin-a-split control. Essentially it's just turning down the volume of one coil. Although the effect is similar, there's a difference in terms of perceived load, capacitance and the henries of the coil.

I took the coil down from 4.1k to 3.3k. That'd be similar to you turning down to roughly 9 or so if it's an audio taper or 8 on a linear taper.

Polepieces do have an effect, I'm not able to hear a drastic one though. Typically I do keep the screws a bit higher on the neck pup and lower on the bridge pup and then I fiddle with the heights if I notice a volume imbalance - however it's not a huge distinction for me. Other opinions might differ.

You'll see far bigger differences from adjusting pickup height. I'll address this along with magnet swaps when I finally get around to my next post (Got test week coming up, so will be a while).

Paddy

Thanks Mike and good luck.

AlanRatcliffe

Paddy wrote Secondly, what kind of an effect does moving the screw pole pieces do to the humbucker? Does it increase the output of that coil over the other one? Or does it just effect the tone response of the pickup?

It depends on how high the whole pickup is (inverse square rule applies and adjustments will be more dramatic if the whole pickup is closer to the strings than if it is further away), but both. It also has an effect on string to string balance, but far less than it would with an adjustable single coil like a P90). Screw and slug coils do sound different (not least because they are in different places on the string), and raising or lowering all the adjustable screws will change the balance between the coils.

Like Mike, I keep my neck screws fairly high - but on both pickups (I'm more of a single-coil fan).

And would there be any hard and fast rules for adjusting the screw pole pieces?

The only hard and fast rule is listen and let your ears be the judge. Oh... and when the screws fall out, you've adjusted a bit too far... ?

Hammeron

Thanks to a special forumite, and there is a shit load of those ? {And you know who you are ?} I ended up with a set of Tonerider Generators and a set of Rocksongs. So I inserted the Gennies into my V and my God the difference!!
It was subtle at first but as I got in I heard the sound come alive! The definition and the clarity, Man! The Vox Wah was re-animated!

And she looks cooler!!
These are the EMG HZ's that came out.

Then I thought, let's replace the Neck pup on the epi goth Explorer with a Rocksong neck.
Here is the pup that came out of the Epi:

The gen on the back is 'SAMSHIN'.
The epi was Korean built in '94.
Anyway, tying the Rocksong into the Epi is proving problematic, seems like the toggle is US.

MikeM

If I remember right, that's a dark era of pickups. I'm sure it's a huge upgrade. Enjoy!!!

Get us a photo of the switch so we can help you troubleshoot ?

Chocklit_Thunda

Hammeron wrote Anyway, tying the Rocksong into the Epi is proving problematic, seems like the toggle is US.

What seems to be the problem? Maybe post a pic so we can assist ?

Edit: Looks like Mike beat me to it ?

Hammeron

Thanks lads!
Before I post pictures.
We disconnected the bridge pup from the toggle and put the Rocksong onto the switch in its place and it works, when it didn't on the other side.
I am sure you are right about the hum being a grounding problem, but what I will do is replace the 3 way toggle, re-connect and go from there.
{And by the way, the 'primitive pups' that came out of the Epi were always way better than the EMG's IMO.}

warrenpridgeon

Is it just me... or do "better" pickups, offering more clarity, expose sloppy playing? I am finding that with my new guitar and a previous loaner (with better pickups than my epi) seemed to highlight when I play sloppy... Could just be psychological??

MikeM

Yea they do ? In general they just sound more detailed and have more dynamics, but yes it is a double edged sword.

MikeM

So I've neglected this a little bit. Been spending time getting my strat to where I want it to be. I've made an underwhelming clip in hopes that people start moving away from the standard 0.047uF and 0.022uF caps.

Now I like bright guitars, I don't know how I ended up this way but losing treble detail makes me sad - so this might still sound a little bright for you folks. This was initially just some noodling to test out the audio recording on my camera, but thought it may as well serve two purposes. This is by no means my ideal tone yet, more just sharing some results for others to make up their own minds - in fact there is no drive from tubes here, only a pedal, then another one stacked.

I run a single master tone on my strat - along with a 3 way 4 pole rotary, which gives me some cool switching options. One of the big advantages to this is being able to properly tweak your caps. For this setup, you only need to use half of the standard 5 way switch, the other half can be populated with suitable for each of the positions. This is actually quite ideal, as the inbetween positions would see a larger capacitance (2 in parallel) than the others, which would be more effective for if you do ever use the tone control in those positions.

In this clip, I am using a 280k volume pot, 250k no-load tone pot and a 2.2nF or 0.0022uF capacitor. In some positions, it's not enough, in others, I think it sounds great (For my purposes). I first switch from bridge all the way through to the neck, then turn my tone control all the way down (Roughly 45s in) and move back down to the bridge. Then noodle a little turning it up and down on the bridge, then move to the neck and do the same.

https://app.box.com/s/ratu5hv1jbz7fftnwcxb

I will most likely end up using a 3.3nF cap for most positions, I do like the middy snarl that it currently brings in, takes the strong presence and bright, searing edge off and thickens things up a hair. I don't see any reason for a guitarist to be using bigger than 15nF.

TL;DR. Clip with a tiny cap value to show that "standard" cap values are often too large.

AlanRatcliffe

Link not shared.

It's largely down to taste Mike. What works for one player or guitar might not suit another.

Interestingly, while I didn't have any tone controls at all for years (and my Strat still doesn't), my Ratocaster (the one Sean now has) ended up with a 33nF cap, which does wonderful things in the mids when backed off, especially under drive. Only problem is it tends to be an all-or nothing control with not much useful graduation between all-on and all-off (for me at least).

On the other hand my singlecut ended up with .022uF on the bridge and .015uF in the neck - and I think I might go to an .022 on the neck too. That's what works best.

MikeM

Updated the link, think it might work.

It is down to taste, but olling the tone all the way down with a 47nF (And often a 22nF) cap makes for a rarely usable tone. Granted, I wrote this with my rig in mind, but I stand by what I say - Just because these large values are standard, doesn't mean they are best.

A while back I saw 10 and 15nF becoming popular on Les Paul forums, so to see what the hype was about, I gave it a bash. That was pretty much my tonal epiphany. I've found it far easier to dial in the tones I want since getting the cap values just right in my guitars.

Considering the maths behind it. A PAF running with a 22nF tone control rolled all the way down loses 20db at 1.5khz when fulled rolled off, 47nF works out to around 1khz when 20db down with a fat low peak at 200hz (Open G string I think?). Tones like that just have so few applications. The difference in perceived sound with a tone control at 3 between a 22nF cap and a 10nF cap are really negligable. We're talking less than a 5db difference from 500-1000hz. However the difference when fulled rolled off is HUGE. Going down to 6.8nF starts to see a change of around 8db at 800hz, but that's getting into real small territory and probably not useful for the average player. Personally I think the sweet spot for a bucker is around 10-15nF depending on how dark you like your guitars, and that matches up with a resonant peak around our usual soloing range, 7th fret on the G up till around 12th fret on the high E.

The situation is almost identical when dealing with single coils. Very little difference in 90% of the range when going from 47nF to 10nF except when completely rolled off. A 22nF rolled off completely on a single coil setup starts to get real close to a humbucker with a 15nF response curve when completely rolled off. That's still half the value of what the generally accepted cap is. Like you say, wonderful things start happening to the mids on single coils when rolling down the tone.. We get a nice big hump in the mids. That's exactly why I'm recommending people to try a couple different values and see just what a change they can make. Even if it's just trying a 10nF, the more a person tests for themselves, the better equppied they are to shape their tone.

Everyone knows that sweetspot to get the "woman" tone, experimenting with smaller cap values may make that tiny 1-1.5 on the tone control expand to a sweep from 0-1.5.

By no means am I saying my way is the right way. In fact I'd like to say that different ways are not the wrong ways ?

MikeM

Been discussing this via PM. Made some comparisons and thought it's worth sharing here. This is based off a 5.8k vintage style pickup with 250k volume and tone. It shows what happens to your frequency response as you roll the tone control down. The red line is the tone control set to 3. Click on the picture to view a larger version as always.

Norman86

Interesting... Not much change, other than a slight bump in resonant frequency!?
And the resonant freq moving higher?!

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