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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 10:53 pm
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A lot of it can be confusing. The first pickup that comes to my mind is the Duncan 59. A few months back a friend of mine came to me with his guitar. He was frustrated that there wasn't much bass tone to it. It had a 59 neck and bridge set in it.

No surprise to me it had little bass tones looking at Duncan's tone chart. But that bridge pickup was OUT THERE with treble. Duncan lists it as "moderate output", but man did it pierce. Certainly more highs than their tone chart suggests. The eq was more like 3/3/10.

I took a Dimarzio Tone Zone, swapped the mag with an A2 alnico, and installed it in the neck (one of my favorite neck sounds btw). The 2 matched great together. I'm not exactly sure how much the output drops by swapping the Tone Zone mag, but I do believe its necessary when putting one in the neck position. I have this mod in a few of my guitars and it seems to work well. I like a Tone Zone better as a neck than a bridge position.

I will say this. When you switch to the middle of the switch to hear those two together, it's an incredible sound. You get the sweet sounds of the Duncan's Highs with the great bass tones of a Tone Zone married together in total freaking bliss.

Takes a lot of money to experiment with this stuff, but charts be damned. Trust your ears. Given the outputs and recommendations from the sites, this wouldn't be recommended. To my ears, it's a very versatile setup.

I guess my point is, outputs can be tweaked to some degree and work fine. In this case, I took advantage of the eq's and what they had to offer more so than output. The large amount of treble of the '59 has a placebo effect of high output, the Tone Zone doesn't.

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Last edited by Jah Soldier on Tue Apr 02, 2013 11:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 11:19 pm
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Nobody in their right mind would ever argue with Bill Lawrence's observations about pickups. He is always right. In my experience as a mere hacker of passive bass instruments and not as a pickup guru, slightly underwound bass pickups sound much more full range with better upper mids. The more you overwind the same pickup the more one-dimensional the tone becomes and the less the control does. Also, all the other voodoo you mentioned matters too. However, I really think that all other things being as equal as possible a pickup overwound by 10% will absolutely be louder, but it will also absolutely have a more limited tonal range. The more you overwind a pickup the narrower the tonal range becomes.

Overwound pickups made at least some sense for bass back when all you had was a volume, bass and treble control. You could get more lower mids by overwinding at the expense of upper mids and yes you would also get increased output which brought some edge to the tone. Nobody noticed at the time that you were losing so many upper mids because back then nobody was using horns in their cabs and nobody was feeding the high-fidelity PA direct. Everyone was using poorly designed 2x15 or 8x10 cabs with no horns. With today's selectable preamp drive controls, nobody really NEEDS an overwound bass pickup anymore and yet they remain quite popular. Players think they need it just because they don't have it and custom winders offer it, but they don't actually NEED it. I always discourage overwinding bass pickups on instruments that will be used with a modern amp/speaker array or used into a preamp for direct recording. I actually instead encourage slightly underwinding these pickups.

You should really hear how much wider range a Jazz Bass pickup sounds when underwound by about 3 to 5%. It is astounding to the point of a passive instrument practically sounding active in tonal nature! Underwinding by the same slight amount makes a P-Bass split-coil sound much more open and up front in tonal nature as well. The underwinding works better for fingerstyle bassists than pickplayers as it also seems to add more attack, which many pick players want to downplay.

Anyway, a good thread and a good idea to debunk the "overwound must be better" mindset. To quote myself, "Loud isn't everything. Tone is everything."


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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 12:23 am
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I agree with you on a lot of that brother Dave. But there are still other factors to consider like music styles and trends. I've been playing Reggae now for a few years, and active bass tones are the norm. Mainly because you basically turn all treble down and maybe barely turn the mids to 3 just to get a bass to cut somewhat. If at all. Reggae and live hip hop may choose for their sound to be more "808" sounding. In that case Active Bass eq and output is king. It's not uncommon to hear a reggae bass player pumping massive watts of bass tones just to cut through, and I gotta be honest, it fits the genre and sounds awesome in the grand scheme of it.

Personally I think the whole high output craze is still a result of trend. Kids want to feel like they have the most powerful guitar in the world. High output, high gain, high pick attach, high, high everything. They'll get the tone thing later. In the meantime, it's a big trend in the guitar market, and by God, pickup manufacturers will cater to it.

I have my own personal reasons why I like high output stuff as well. In my last band, my job for guitar was to do sharp skank rhythms, and hard rock/ heavy metal solos. In a mix of a band of 6-people, those solos needed to boost above it all, and well, I just like more of a fuzz type distortion for them. I rather like a hum to kick the distortion hard. Vintage type outputs just don't seem to do that.

I played the Cali Roots Festival a few times. 50 or so Reggae bands, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who showed up with EMG active hums. Nobody noticed anything during my rhythms. The mids married nicely with the keys in the cleans. An EMG 81 pumps the mids as nicely as a JB. But the attack of an EMG is sharper. I could have played either one with a similar result. But output to kick the dist. smoothly was more important than OCD of tone. In a live situation, "tonal range" is very limited in a big band.

People always ask me why I have so many guitars. It's more due to my OCD of situations. Most of them are for recording situations. The others are for live situations and capturing or emulating the most important parts of the recordings. I use many tonal ranges in the studio, but I'm limited live, and opt for narrower ranges for performance purposes. I've never used EMG actives in the studio.

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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 1:36 am
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GilgaFrank wrote:
Got to rant a bit here, this is a personal bugbear for me. Just seen sooooo many posts on the internet asking if pickup X's resistance is "a good match" for pickup Y's resistance, followed by half-informed pseudoscience responses. So just let me get this out of my system then I'll be calm again.DC resistance does not directly equate to output level of a pickup.I honestly do not know why manufacturers even bother to specify it other than to allow you to check if the coils are damaged
The output voltage, tone and frequency response of a pickup is a very complex function of impedance, inductance, magnetic field density, wire gauge, capacitance and a whole host of other voodoo. Think about it for a second, when would you ever have DC running through your pickups?

Thanks for listening. I feel better already.


Oh! If you feel better I'm happy Bros, :lol:

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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 3:56 am
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BMW-KTM wrote:
Frank, while you're on a roll, tell us about Henrys. I never quite understood them.


Now that's a tough one to explain. If any electrical engineers are reading this, please don't savage me for trying to put this into simple language!

The Henry (H) is the unit of inductance. As far as pickups and amplifiers are concerned, inductance is a tendency of long coils of wire to "smooth out" changes in a fluctuating current.

When combined with resistance and capacitance, inductance can provide filtering to an audio signal in applications like band pass, low pass and high pass filters. Open up an old wahwah pedal, you'll find a sealed coil of wire in the filtering circuit.

The choke in your tube amp is an inductor, just a big coil of wire that resists fluctuating changes in the DC produced by the power supply - so it smoothes the supply voltage, hence they are referred to as smoothing chokes.

The primary and secondary windings of your output transformer have significant inductances too and these values have an effect on the frequency response of the transformer. Old hifi tube amp designers would (and still do!) specify inductance values of the output transformer to be used in a circuit.

Speaker coils, more inductance! And more effect on frequency response. And if you've got a passive crossover in the cabinet then that'll be two or more RLC filters, resistance + capacitance + inductance = high pass filter or low pass filter or band pass filter.

As we know, pickups have a resistance and an inductance. They will also have some self-capacitance which may affect the frequency response. A guitar pickup isn't anywhere near being a linear device, the inductance and capacitance and resistance all work to shape the frequency response into peaks and valleys. And that's what makes pickups sound different.

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Last edited by GilgaFrank on Wed Apr 03, 2013 11:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 4:07 am
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Just another thought about DC resistance. As Bill Lawrence points out, DCR is the resistance with a zero Hertz signal, something which never happens in a guitar. If you're going to specify resistance of a pickup then the right way to do it would be to specify impedance at a given frequency and voltage. And here's why ...

Impedance is resistance to an AC signal of a given frequency. So while a coil may have 6 kiloOhm resistance to a signal at 1 kHz, the resistance at 5 kHz may be the same or higher or lower. Knowing how the impedance varies with frequency and where the resonant peak is would perhaps give a clearer indication of the frequency response.

Look at this typical impedance vs frequency graph from a loudspeaker manufacturer ...

Image

That tells me a LOT more than just simply putting a meter across the terminals to measure DCR.

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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 8:04 am
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Here is the product page for Fender Fat 50s Strat pickups:

http://www.fender.com/en-CA/accessories/pick-ups/custom-shop-fat-50s-stratocaster-pickups/

If you look at the Specs tab you'll notice that both DC Resistance and Inductance (Henries) are mentioned. What, if any, insight about the nature of the pups can be gleaned from this information? That is to say, why is it there? And if there is info to be gleaned how do we harvest and understand it?

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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 8:15 am
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BMW-KTM wrote:
What, if any, insight about the nature of the pickups can be gleaned from this information?


Little or none. Especially when compared to a recording of the pickups in use.

BMW-KTM wrote:
That is to say, why is it there? And if there is info to be gleaned how do we harvest and understand it?


I think manufacturers publish it just because that's what other manufacturers do! If guitarists insist on basing buying decisions on it then no manufacturer wants to be left out. The fact that it is useless information doesn't deter anyone from publishing it and deluding themselves into thinking it's valuable.

The only thing DC resistance tells you is if the coils are damaged. Unless you're talking about comparing individual pickups in a matched set, in which case the higher resistance will usually indicate the overwound bridge pickup.

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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 1:54 pm
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Given the discussion here, ya'll might be interested in this:

http://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index. ... hread=3627

I have not had a chance to use it, but it looks interesting.

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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:15 pm
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Noticed this linked from that page ...

http://buildyourguitar.com/resources/lemme/index.htm

Nice analysis of pickups as RLC filters.

Quote:
Many people measure only the resistance and think they know something about a pickup. But this is a fundamental error. By far the most important quantity is the inductance, measured in Henries. It depends on the number of turns, the magnetic material in the coil, the winding density and the overall geometry of the coil. The resistance and the capacitance don't have much influence and can be neglected in a first approximation.

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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:17 pm
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Jah Soldier wrote:
I agree with you on a lot of that brother Dave. But there are still other factors to consider like music styles and trends. I've been playing Reggae now for a few years, and active bass tones are the norm. Mainly because you basically turn all treble down and maybe barely turn the mids to 3 just to get a bass to cut somewhat. If at all. Reggae and live hip hop may choose for their sound to be more "808" sounding. In that case Active Bass eq and output is king. It's not uncommon to hear a reggae bass player pumping massive watts of bass tones just to cut through, and I gotta be honest, it fits the genre and sounds awesome in the grand scheme of it.

Personally I think the whole high output craze is still a result of trend. Kids want to feel like they have the most powerful guitar in the world. High output, high gain, high pick attach, high, high everything. They'll get the tone thing later. In the meantime, it's a big trend in the guitar market, and by God, pickup manufacturers will cater to it.

I have my own personal reasons why I like high output stuff as well. In my last band, my job for guitar was to do sharp skank rhythms, and hard rock/ heavy metal solos. In a mix of a band of 6-people, those solos needed to boost above it all, and well, I just like more of a fuzz type distortion for them. I rather like a hum to kick the distortion hard. Vintage type outputs just don't seem to do that.

I played the Cali Roots Festival a few times. 50 or so Reggae bands, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who showed up with EMG active hums. Nobody noticed anything during my rhythms. The mids married nicely with the keys in the cleans. An EMG 81 pumps the mids as nicely as a JB. But the attack of an EMG is sharper. I could have played either one with a similar result. But output to kick the dist. smoothly was more important than OCD of tone. In a live situation, "tonal range" is very limited in a big band.

People always ask me why I have so many guitars. It's more due to my OCD of situations. Most of them are for recording situations. The others are for live situations and capturing or emulating the most important parts of the recordings. I use many tonal ranges in the studio, but I'm limited live, and opt for narrower ranges for performance purposes. I've never used EMG actives in the studio.


I only have one active bass and it is totally stock other than strings. I think I used it last about 3 years ago. I bought it for some specific things and just haven't needed it. Nothing wrong with it, except it is active. LOL. Like I said, I am a hacker of passive bass tone. There is a lot of Reggae tone living in a stock 70's P-Bass also. I have a Tech 21 Bass Driver Deluxe which can make a passive bass sound almost active. Just realized, I need to take the battery out of that active bass right now. I'll go do that.

When people ask me why I have so many basses my answer is slightly different. I don't need all the different basses, I need the different strings.


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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 10:58 pm
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I'll be looking for a good p-pickup soon. Any suggestions?

I have a Jazz Bass copy, but last New Years a pawn shop sold me a cheap Yamaha RBX170 for $25. I'd have to say that the P-pickup does sound more to my taste for Reggae. I'm a Bass noob myself. Although I keep my interest on what others in the genre use, I seem to have my own way of utilizing what I have.

For example, if I'm doing smooth, slow, sustaining stuff, I use my Ibanez with flat wounds. If I'm doing something that requires more aggressive playing, finger tapping, or a slap here and there, I use the Jazz bass. I'm starting to like the punch of the P-bass a little more though.

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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 11:12 pm
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I have a significant background in EE, but...

All that aside, it's simple...

JUST TRUST YOUR EARS !!

cheers!

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Last edited by Lightnin MN on Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 11:20 pm
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That plot tells me a lot too. Assuming it's the magnitude of the impedance, it is telling me that a lot of power across the frequency band is probably being reflected rather than delivered to the load.

I'm not an expert on guitar pickups, but this seems like a simple transmission line problem. You have a generator (pickup) with some characteristic impedance, attached to a transmission line (guitar cable) with its own characteristic impedance, attached to a load (amplifier) with its own characteristic impedance.

Wherever there is an impedance mismatch, you are reflecting part of your power rather than transmitting it. The greater the mismatch, the more power is reflected.

The ideal pickup would have constant impedance across the entire frequency band and that impedance would be equal to the impedance of your cable. Then you would deliver all of the power from the pickup to the cable for anything you played. Assuming amps are impedance matched to the cables by a matching network of some kind, for whatever standard impedance guitar cables have, you would then have maximum power delivered to the amp.

Power delivered to a load on a transmission line is given by P = |v|^2/(2Z), where |v| is the magnitude of the forward-traveling voltage wave and Z is the characteristic impedance of the transmission line.

But impedance is not just AC resistance, it is also AC reactance. Since a wire coil is inherently inductive at low frequencies, the inductance is also part of the impedance (unless the coil is resonant).

Finally, you don't need impedance for AC circuits, but it simplifies things when you have time-harmonic sources, such as waves.

I hope this helped.

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Post subject: Re: Pickup DC Resistance - CAUTION: RANT
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 11:36 pm
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spacewolf wrote:
...but this seems like a simple transmission line problem. You have a generator (pickup) with some characteristic impedance, attached to a transmission line (guitar cable) with its own characteristic impedance, attached to a load (amplifier) with its own characteristic impedance...



AND... all fed through a speaker with it's own unique characteristics and impedence !!

cheers!

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