31

The Pickup Place / Re: Pickup consistency from unit to unit

« on: July 26, 2021, 08:17:09 AM »

+1 to everything Stephan said. I’d also add that no two wooden guitars should be expected to sound exactly alike; and it’s always been a rabbit hole for me to try a pickup I like in a new guitar, only to find myself subsequently auditioning different pups on the basis of what the guitar seems to need more or less of.

For example, I put Bluesbuckers in the neck position of most of my guitars, even though the results are all different (eg. The strat still sounds like a strat, one guitar sounds more like a jazzbox while another of the same model comes across like an SG, etc.). But that pickup still gets me what I ask for out of a neck humbucker: P90-ish clean tones that can do jazz in series, and does a mean blues tone with minimal volume difference when split.

In short, it can be frustrating to find your “preferred” pickup not sounding like the best fit for a guitar, but I try to look at it as an excuse to buy more pickups.

Concerning the topic title: It’s not so much tolerances in production variance as it is our ears expecting all variables to remain constant when auditioning a single new component. Bear in mind that the new guitar with your favorite pickup shouldn’t sound the same, and you’ll have a much better impression of what needs to be tweaked in the equipment to get it where you need it to be.

32

The Pickup Place / Re: Single coil like bluesbucker split

« on: July 26, 2021, 08:08:30 AM »

To my ears, the Bluesbucker is a ceramic pickup that goes for a pseudo SRV sound when split and, even then, is hotter than most neck single coils. Dimarzio doesn’t really make an equivalent ceramic single coil that aims for that sound. I’d be curious to read what Blucher prescribes. That all being said, any “Texas” style neck single coil should get you somewhere in the ballpark.

33

The Pickup Place / Re: Air Zone...Anyone?

« on: July 02, 2021, 04:24:05 AM »

Every guitar and set of ears are different. Dimarzio has a range of pickups (and a purchase exchange program) to account for this alleged “user error” of individual preference. For what it’s worth, the most pervasive user error in this dead community is in prescribing pickups on the basis of wood species, rather than consideration of the ideal the player is striving to realize.

e.g. “Bright guitar thickened up a bit too much from the Air Zone? Did you want to try a pickup of similar output, but voiced a bit brighter? Check out the posted EQs for other pickups on the medium and high output pages of the Dimarzio site, and see if the product descriptions seem like they’d be a better fit. And in case you want to try a lower output pickup with a similarly warm voicing (that may not emphasize the “mud” quite as much), the Breed neck and Al Dimeola bridge pups have been reported to similarly mellow and fill out brighter/thinner guitars.”

34

The Pickup Place / Re: DiMarzio wins double cream trademark battle

« on: May 29, 2021, 01:16:09 AM »

I was being flippant/facetious, and “patent troll” gets thrown around often where it doesn’t apply.

35

The Pickup Place / Re: DiMarzio wins double cream trademark battle

« on: May 28, 2021, 06:12:36 AM »

Nice patent trolling, Larry.

36

The Pickup Place / Re: Replace baseplate?

« on: May 19, 2021, 02:37:02 PM »

I solder 3-48 nuts to the underside of the mounting tab holes.

37

The Pickup Place / Re: What does "The coils are individually tuned to capture overtones"

« on: May 19, 2021, 02:35:09 PM »

I will add that to the sticky with a question mark until the information is confirmed.

I believe it was black beans.

38

The Pickup Place / Re: What does "The coils are individually tuned to capture overtones"

« on: May 13, 2021, 04:26:06 AM »

Until recently, the patents listed for each product were the most pertinent/reality-based technical info Dimarzio was willing to share about their many distinct and proprietary flavors of vanilla. The product descriptions are mere ads, ranging from boilerplate to nonsensical (“Thundering cloud of ice cream”, anyone?); and should be taken with a grain of salt.

The description seems to reference their “dual resonance” patent, which consists of winding a humbucker’s two coils to different resistance measurements (e.g. an 8k humbucker with coils measuring 3.9k and 4.1k). Dimarzio achieves this in a few different ways, depending on the design. Essentially, the intended result is for the phase cancellation between two different coils wired in series to produce a pickup timbre that seems to emphasize whichever particular frequencies aren’t being cancelled out.

Steve Blucher has been experimenting with this for at least thirty years; so Gilbert likely submitted an abstract request that the neck pickup of the set sound like refried beans or something. Steve likely felt that the prototype Paul approved sounded more like a single coil than humbucker, and that impression subsequently made it into the ad copy.

Concerning coils: Dimarzio pickups have, at most, two coils/bobbins. I recall some goofy three-coil humbuckers from 20 years ago, but that’s it. Every Dimarzio humbucker (with the partial exception of the Bluesbucker) is “intended” to be mounted with the screw coil facing “out”, but you’re free to flip them around if you feel they sound better. Dimarzio addresses this here:

https://www.dimarzio.com/node/1723

39

The Pickup Place / Re: Michael Frank Braun HSX Circuit Impressions

« on: May 06, 2021, 12:44:44 AM »

It was for me. I’d been experimenting with coil tapping/filtering for a while before Dirk Wacker’s article prescribed some good RC values (along with the whys and hows).

40

The Pickup Place / Re: Michael Frank Braun HSX Circuit Impressions

« on: April 18, 2021, 07:16:36 AM »

Some further experiments/thoughts:

The stock Strandberg wiring is to shunt the outside coils of the MFBs to ground (or, in this case, through the HSX filter that sends some frequencies to ground).

Though a common arrangement with full coil shunting/splitting, this seems an odd choice, here; given that the filtering of the circuit results in single coil simulations in which the neck pickup loses some bass, and the bridge pickup loses some treble (not the frequencies I’d be cutting to simulate a single coil). I swapped some wires so the inside coils would be filtered instead, and...it’s an improvement.

Given I’ve never bothered to check what component values are at play under the goop, I was surprised to find that more mids seemed to be cut, this way (something much-needed to inch these honky humbuckers closer to twang territory). I can only assume it’s due to the Strandberg MFB Fusion humbuckers’ coils being wound to asymmetrical resistance values.

This reaffirms my hypothesis that, due to the HSX circuit’s primary design goal being to minimize volume loss (rather than to minimize hum or affect a dramatic re-voicing) resulting from coil-shunting, the best pickup pairing would seem to be humbuckers in the lower-output realm that would otherwise be unsuitable for splitting.

Considering I’ve previously solved the issue this circuit presents (different R/C values according to each pickup’s needs), I don’t see much point in experimenting with pairing a weaker set of humbuckers with it: This product essentially fulfills a need for an aftermarket solution specific to a problem those of us who prefer 50’s style humbuckers encounter, rather than something needing to be paired with high-output humbuckers at the factory.

If you have something like a Les Paul or HH tele with four-conductor pickups that are firmly in vintage-output territory, this product will get you far enough into the single coil ballpark to avoid having to switch guitars. For everyone else with humbuckers, a 3.9k resistor and .047µF cap in series along the humbucker series connection’s shunt to ground is a few cents’ worth of a starting point that will suffice for more players than this $44 product will.

41

The Pickup Place / Re: Michael Frank Braun designed Strandberg Prog HBs?

« on: April 18, 2021, 12:44:11 AM »

Your best bet may be to email Dimarzio with the MF specs, what kind of tone your looking for, and see what Steve suggests. Being as I only have firsthand experience with the Fusions, most of the Dimarzios that demo reminds me of are ceramic.

42

The Pickup Place / Re: Dimarzio tech support MIA?

« on: April 16, 2021, 09:31:56 PM »

I emailed Steve earlier in the week with a spec question and received a reply within 24 hours. I don’t know what the deal is, but I get the impression that they’re treating the backlog of emails like a sink full of dishes.

43

The Pickup Place / Re: Michael Frank Braun designed Strandberg Fusion HBs?

« on: April 16, 2021, 09:29:15 PM »

That demo is of the Prog pickups; not the Fusions. The Progs are higher output and voiced brighter than the Fusions, which MFB and myself describe as very much shooting for the Allan Holdsworth tone (pronounced mids, subdued highs).

Per the Strandberg site, the MF Prog Bridge is high output, alnico 5, 13.3k, and wound with 43 formvar. The neck is medium output, alnico 3, 8.7k, and 42 formvar. The only single coil currently sold by Strandberg is the Fusion middle, though I don’t believe that’s what’s being demoed in the video.

44

The Pickup Place / Michael Frank Braun HSX Circuit Impressions

« on: April 16, 2021, 05:53:10 AM »

Edit: Don’t know what our admin did, but I can finally post again after several months!

For reference:

https://strandbergguitars.com/product/strandberg-hsx-hyper-single-coil-circuit/

https://support.strandbergguitars.com/article/106-the-hsx-module-looks-exciting-please-tell-me-more-about-it

https://strandbergguitars.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/el-hsh5-03-r1_hsh_wiring_mf_pickups.pdf

First-off, the HSX (or “Hyper Single Coil”) circuit is just a passive RC filter for humbucker series connections to pass through on their way to ground. What it does differently from most I’ve seen, however, is have a component to it that runs in parallel between the input and output lugs of the volume pot, as well.

The hype on the Strandberg site gives the impression that the HSX is filtering each of the two coils separately; so the resulting series-connected signal processed in parallel adds up to a facsimile of a single coil EQ curve, with minimal decibel loss. In reality, I suspect that the HSX is just two common RC filters - acting as a series connection shunt (As you find in PRS coil splits) and treble bleed (a mod becoming more and more common in production guitars) - gooped together in a $44 disc shape, for the sake of making inferring the dollar’s worth of resistor and capacitor values superficially more difficult.

As novel as the approach is said to be, I’m afraid my first-hand impressions are not positive - In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the MFB-designed “Fusion” pickups currently paired with the circuit in its exclusive offering from Strandberg are the worst set anyone could have chosen to demo this filter; because the two products are not in any way optimized for one another.

In my previous experiments shunting humbucker series connections through C and RC filters, the depth of the desired midrange cut had to be tuned by mating the appropriate component value(s) to the voicing of the pickup being affected. In addition to being a case-by-case basis, the pickup being in neck or bridge position will also dictate how much cut feels necessary to suit each player’s needs.

The HSX, however, is one-size-fits-all. The result, in the case of this unfortunate pairing, is that the humbuckers included in the Strandberg Fusion (hot-rodded with cranked mids and subdued highs for the sake of emulating Allan Holdsworth’s post-amp graphic EQ settings) don’t receive sufficient mid-scoop from the HSX component values to seem in any way “single coil-like.” In fact, even a full coil split results in honky mids from these pickups.

I feel the HSX could shine, so long as it was prescribed for use with a four-conductor PAF or other lower-output humbucker style that suffers from anemic split tones. But why spend $44 + tax on a dollar’s worth of components to share between two humbuckers, when you could just buy the dollar’s worth of components in the first place?

My verdict is that a few cheap components purchased after reading this RC-tuned coil shunting article by Dirk Wacker are a far better investment than a gooped disc branded “MFB”:

https://www.premierguitar.com/diy/mod-garage/jazzmaster-mods

That said, I’ll update this thread after trying the circuit with some “vintage”-output Dimarzio offerings.

45

The Pickup Place / Re: Any chance of a stickied DiMarzio Mods post?

« on: April 16, 2021, 05:47:11 AM »

I’ve swapped screw types and lengths. Swapping magnets makes far more of a difference.