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The Pickup Place / Accuracy of DCR values

« on: February 20, 2025, 03:34:22 PM »

Does anyone have a feeling of how accurate large scale (and supposedly highly automated) pickup makers can wind their pickups to a certain spec or advertised value?

I have some examples:
I have two EvH Custom bridge pickups, one measures 16.74k, the other one 17.46k. A third one I had that I sold was more like 18k IIRC. In the "Remembering EvH" story it is "advertised" as 17k.
Then I have an f-spaced VHPAF measuring 9.90k, while Tonejourney's f-spaced specimen measures 9.59k, and it was advertised as 9.13k (dunno if as f-spaced).
Finally I have a 36th PAF neck that measures 7.67k, advertised as 7.31k.

I consider this to be quite a large range of values.
I'm just curious, there is nothing wrong with the pickups I own(ed).

But considering the hype around the gazillion PAF type pickups ...
(I mean, ok, there's probably still capacitance and inductance values that result from wire pull strength, or various layering techniques and whatnot. But does this translate into audible differences?)

Curious what's your point of view on that 

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The Pickup Place / neck humbucker (or BB) to complement PAF type bridge HB

« on: September 20, 2023, 06:39:13 AM »

I play Music Man Axis (Super) Sport guitars since like forever, and haven't played other guitars and/or pickups since. I am all into tight chuggy 90s/00s rock/metal sounds, with not too much gain (play a Fryette Deliverance clone, 60% in More mode, 40 % in Less mode). But I also like to roll back the guitar volume in Less mode to get a clean-ish sound.
The pickups work exceptionally well with the Deliverance.

I really like the Custom Dimarzios and consider them to be THE best medium to hot rock/metal pickups known to mankind (well, to me ...).
Especially the bass balance between the neck and bridge pickup is phenomenal: despite being quite beefy and warm, the neck pickup's bass balances so well with the bridge pickup's bass.

Now I recently got ahold of a Virtual Hot PAF, which I put in one of my Axis Sport guitars and kinda like it (also fancy a Fortitude for this guitar...). Now the stock Axis neck pickup is a little too hot, and so... why not try something different just for the fun of it.

Which Dimarzio (or Suhr -> triangular mounting lugs !) neck humbuckers would you recommend? It should be quite tight or even thin on bass, just to have a good bass balance with the VHPAF or Fortitude. I seldomly us the neck pickup or middle position for distortion.

Just the other day, I played a Gibson Les Paul Gary Moore, the cheap one with fake binding, no finish and P90 in the neck position. The P90 should be stock (whatever they came stock with), and in the bridge position it had a Duncan SH-1.
I really liked the P90 sound by itself, and also the middle position, but switching to the bridge SH-1, the latter got too thin in bass for my taste.
So although seriously considering a Bluesbucker as companion either to the VHPAF or Fortidue, I'm afraid that it might be too bass heavy, just going by the Tone Guide numbers for bass:
Fortitude 4.0
Bluesbucker: 4.5
(The VHPAF had bass = 6.5 with the old Tone Guide system. The PAF 36th bridge had 6.0 in the old system. PAF 36th has 4.0 in the NEW system. So I think it might be legitimate to assume, that the VHPAF would be 4-ish in the new system).
Maybe someone can share his experiences with the BB in a similar application.