Measuring pickup resistance...

[stadams]

I was doing a complete detail of my LP today and decided to measure the DC resistance of each of the pickups. My question is, are most of the measurements that I have been reading here on the board determined with the the pickups still installed in the guitar or are they from pickups that have been removed from the circuit completely? Electrically, the pickups appear to be in parallel with the associated volume pot and therefore barely effected by the 500k worth of resistance in the parallel combination. In my measurements, the tone pot position had no measurable bearing on the reading of my meter.

Any thoughts?

[stadams]

Wow! Not even a nibble.

I have searched the forum and found several threads that talk about measuring the resistance of pickups. I was just wondering if everyone that reports their findings are actually de-soldering the connections in their guitars to make the measurements. In the case of my measurements, the difference between the two techniques is less than 1%. Example- 7.5k removed from the circuit versus 7.389k in the circuit. The difference, the paralleled 500k pot.

Has anyone here truly characterized their pickups (i.e. inductance, resistance, frequency response, etc.)?

Anyway, thanks for looking!

[Liam]

I either measure them desoldered, or I take the pot resistance out of the equation with an equation. It doesn't make a huge difference. I use the equation:

Pickup resistance = (Total resistance * Pot resistance)/(Pot resistance - Total resistance)

Meaning that if you measure a pickup at 8 k ohms, and it's in parallel with a 500 k pot, the actual resistance is 8.13 k ohms.

If the pot is in actual fact 460 k, it makes little difference to the calculations. With some wiring schemes you can measure the pot resistance, but with most modern ones you have to desolder to get it.

Tone pot will never have any effect on DC resistance measurements.

I keep meaning to do a complete characterisation of some pickups, but I never get around to it. I've been wondering how much effect the magnet material has on the self inductance. If I ever get around to looking at any I'll post my findings.

Liam

[stadams]

Thanks Liam.

I suspected as much. I too used the total parallel resistance equation to determine as close as possible the real pickup resistance. Unfortunately, I have yet to work up the nerve to disconnect any of the electrical hardware on my guitar so I have been using the nominal potentiometer values. She is a 27 year old virgin in that respect.

Thanks again,