Humbuckers used for ANY position

[Diocletian]

I was always curious about the Jackson guitars that came with Seymour Duncan JBs in both the bridge and the neck. On a 24 fret guitar, where the neck pickup is closer to the bridge anyway, what would be the point in such a hot pickup being there? Especially when it's the same model as the bridge one! Why not just use the tone control and have nothing in the neck?

 

[ReWind James]

The neck /bridge position doesn't change that.Theyre still in phase because the pickups are still pointing in the right direction.ie. neck pickup screws toward fingerboard, Treble pickup screws pointing towards the bridge. Only when you have those screws pointing the wrong way around with you have it OOP.

That's absolutely not correct.

Please ignore this advice. I don't know why people keep continuing to believe this.

Rotating one or both pickups around in the ring does nothing at all to change the phase relationship. That's like hanging a clock on the wall upside down and expecting the hands to run backwards.

 

[ReWind James]

I was always curious about the Jackson guitars that came with Seymour Duncan JBs in both the bridge and the neck. On a 24 fret guitar, where the neck pickup is closer to the bridge anyway, what would be the point in such a hot pickup being there? Especially when it's the same model as the bridge one! Why not just use the tone control and have nothing in the neck?

If you put the same pickup in both positions of any guitar, the pickups will sound distinctly different, just because of the physical nature of where they sit in the guitar and under the strings. Most guitars had the same pickup in both / all positions until the late 1970s (short of Teles, Dogear P-90s and other unusual circumstances).

It's the same reason an acoustic sounds different when you pick near the bridge or near the neck. Sounds different in exactly the same way, too.

 

[dspelman]

The ReWind Creme Brulee is a great example of a "bridge pickup" that absolutely slays in the neck position.

I have a couple of guitars that have a DiMarzio Fast Track II in the neck position. That pickup is a single-coil size pickup originally designed for the bridge position in a superstrat. It's pretty hot (18Kohm), and in the neck position it has about three times the volume of the 9.2Kohm '57 I have in the bridge. On the other hand, because of its smaller size, it's clearer and cleaner than a standard neck humbucker. Makes a great lead pickup.

When folks began experimenting with hotter pickups in the bridge position in the late '80's, it was largely to balance out the volume difference that bridge vs neck position produced. Later, it just became a bullet point for manufacturers and now it's sort of become gospel (a "balanced pickup set"). But there's absolutely no necessity for it to stay that way.

 

[dspelman]

Each set of ears is different. When I used a 52mm pickup in the neck, I couldn't detect any shortcomings.
If the string didn't line up precisely with the pole, when I string bend a note "over the pole" I couldn't detect a volume increase.
From what I gathered, the bar magnet pretty much magnetisers the whole area.
That's what my ears hear. Other ears may be different.

Manufacturers gotta have bullet points to sell guitars.
Carvin produced pickups with 22 pole pieces for a long time -- the M22 series and the C22 series. These were actually 11 pole pieces on each coil. In theory every string was surrounded by two pole pieces, which made it impossible to bend OUT of a magnetic "zone." Truth was, there really wasn't a need for pole pieces at all -- the Bill Lawrence-designed pickups for Gibson's first-ever "hot pickup" guitar (the L6S) don't have external pole pieces. But guitarists, most of whom hear with their eyes, missed them. So they've been included ever since, and there's always the guitar player whose nose gets bent out of shape because a string doesn't pass dead center over a pole screw.

 

[dspelman]

Use your ears. There are way too many variables to choose a pickup by its DCR. DCR does not equal output.

Suhr makes that point in the description of their Doug Aldrich series of pickups. Specifically, those pickups should be "hot" pickups by virtue of their DCR, but they have a much different sound profile than you'd expect based on that parameter alone.

 

[ReWind James]

I have a couple of guitars that have a DiMarzio Fast Track II in the neck position. That pickup is a single-coil size pickup originally designed for the bridge position in a superstrat. It's pretty hot (18Kohm), and in the neck position it has about three times the volume of the 9.2Kohm '57 I have in the bridge. On the other hand, because of its smaller size, it's clearer and cleaner than a standard neck humbucker. Makes a great lead pickup.

When folks began experimenting with hotter pickups in the bridge position in the late '80's, it was largely to balance out the volume difference that bridge vs neck position produced. Later, it just became a bullet point for manufacturers and now it's sort of become gospel (a "balanced pickup set"). But there's absolutely no necessity for it to stay that way.

FWIW - the Fast Track II is louder and brighter than the '57 Classic because the Fast Track II has a ceramic magnet and the '57 Classic has an A2 magnet.

The only reason the DCR reads so high on the Fast Track II is because the wire used is very thin, in order to fit two coils in such a small space. There is actually much less wire on it, though, not more.

A smaller size pickup doesn't at all have to equate to a cleaner and clearer sound. Just think about how bright, clear and clean a P-90 (very large coil) can be compared to a Tele neck pickup (very small coil).

 

[ReWind James]

Manufacturers gotta have bullet points to sell guitars.
Carvin produced pickups with 22 pole pieces for a long time -- the M22 series and the C22 series. These were actually 11 pole pieces on each coil. In theory every string was surrounded by two pole pieces, which made it impossible to bend OUT of a magnetic "zone." Truth was, there really wasn't a need for pole pieces at all -- the Bill Lawrence-designed pickups for Gibson's first-ever "hot pickup" guitar (the L6S) don't have external pole pieces. But guitarists, most of whom hear with their eyes, missed them. So they've been included ever since, and there's always the guitar player whose nose gets bent out of shape because a string doesn't pass dead center over a pole screw.

Carvin only produced 22 pole humbuckers because it was necessary for them to sell double cream open bobbin humbuckers. DiMarzio held (and still does hold) a trademark on open double creams with six or twelve adjustable poles.

Leo Fender did the "two poles on each side of the string" thing long before, with the Jazz Bass, in his attempt to get a plunky percussive jazz sound.

 

[dspelman]

Carvin only produced 22 pole humbuckers because it was necessary for them to sell double cream open bobbin humbuckers. DiMarzio held (and still does hold) a trademark on open double creams with six or twelve adjustable poles.

Leo Fender did the "two poles on each side of the string" thing long before, with the Jazz Bass, in his attempt to get a plunky percussive jazz sound.

Very possibly. Carvin was making pickups long before DiMarzio, but I don't remember them having double cream open bobbin humbuckers much before 1977, and I believe 1977 is when they debuted the M22 series pickups. Over time, they've had a number of different colors of bobbin in the M22 series (I have red bobbins on one guitar) and in the C22.

Carvin, in its heyday, incorporated a lot of "features" in its guitars. A 1977 DC-150 could be had with coil splits, phase switching and stereo output jacks, a 24-fret set neck and so on.

 

[freefrog]

Fellas, so the magnet orientation does not matter and what's the deal with magnets being oriented and some not?

I was talking with a buddy last night about pickups and he brought an alnico 5 unoriented and alnico 5 oriented. Again I'm no pickup expert but do enjoy learning about these things so forgive my dumbo questions.

Unoriented magnets still have a polarity once magnetized.

See there for further info: https://music-electronics-forum.com...lnico-5-humbucker-magnets?p=695447#post695447