RC-120 Pickup Samples

[raygun85]

Just reposting this from the thread where this idea originated from.

The bridge is actually wound to around 13K and the neck to 12K. These pickups came out very loud, but also very dynamic. Very responsive to your picking technique - play softer and it cleans up nicely; play aggressively and they really drive your amp. To reduce the pulling effect that the ceramic magnets would have on the strings, we used a steel blade pole-piece as opposed to flipping the magnets up as in other common smooth-top pickups. The magnets were reading at about 1380 when installed. The strength at the top of the pole-piece was reading around 300 - about 1/3 of what you would be reading in a normal smooth-top pickup, but about twice as much as you would have an Alnico V. Therefore, the string-pull won't be nearly as bad as a normal smooth-top, but you'll have higher inductance than a standard Mosrite pickup (e.g. the RH-100). Steel is more permeable than the magnets themselves and therefore reduce some of the "ice-pick" harshness that is common in most ceramic-equipped pickups.

The samples below were recorded with a Tascam handheld sound recorder directly in front of a Class A amplifier with the gain at about 9 o' clock. (My playing sucks because I did this in a hurry and didn't take time to go back and do it right. ) I never touched the controls on the guitar, except for the pickup switch. The amplifier settings are exactly the same on all demo tracks except "Med_Sample_00" when I pushed the gain up to about 12 o' clock.

Sample #1 (Low Gain): http://www.m3california.com/audio/Tone_Samples/PICKUPS/RC-120/Lo_Sample_01.mp3
Sample #2 (Low Gain): http://www.m3california.com/audio/Tone_Samples/PICKUPS/RC-120/Lo_Sample_02.mp3
Sample #3 (Med Gain): http://www.m3california.com/audio/Tone_Samples/PICKUPS/RC-120/Med_Sample_00.mp3
Demonstration of Dynamics: http://www.m3california.com/audio/Tone_Samples/PICKUPS/RC-120/Dyanmics_DEMO.mp3

[oipunkguy]

matt, have you ever tried using rod magnets? it would be interesting to see if there was a big difference in tone with rod mags in a smooth cover opposed to the bar design.

[raygun85]

Yeah, I've played around with them. In fact, I have a pair of custom Seymour Duncan soapbar pickups that Tim Wilson sent us a couple of years ago when we were helping to prototype some Ventures model guitars for Wilson Bros. Supposedly, Seymour was designing them for Nokie before he decided to stay with the humbuckers. I can't confirm the story but I do have a pretty good source - Tim Wilson.

Anyhow, I don't know what diameter the wire is. I've always assumed it is 42 gauge since that seems to be the industry standard. They don't have the compressed tone you'd expect from a thinner wire like 43 or 44 either. I have to say that, while I didn't dislike those pickups, they just didn't sound all that different from a run-of-the-mill P-90. Nothing all that unique.



The reason we went with a blade on these new experimental pickups was because we were trying to make something in the smooth-top vein, but also higher output. Since these suckers are wound almost twice as high as the traditional smooth-top, we wanted to use ceramic 8 magnets since they seem to scoop mids more than Alnico V. The higher windings accentuate the midrange more and lower resonant peak. Depending on the pickup application, ceramic 8 scoops the mids somewhat and emphasizes the highs. For lower output pickups, it has the tendency to give that brittle "ice pick" tone. But seeing as how the higher windings also lower the resonant peak, it all sort of balanced itself out tonally. But flipping the ceramic magnets up on their side probably would have caused more string-pull (they effect a magnetic field more than twice as strong as an average Alnico V) and contributed more of the brittle harshness we were trying to balance out. Hence, the blade. Additionally, steel is less dense than the magnetic materials and helps balance out the magnetic field across the width of the strings as well as concentrating the flux lines. The blade is really just a cog-in-a-wheel in the grand scheme of this pickup experiment - a necessary part to achieve an intended purpose, but the blade itself never was the primary feature or objective. We could use screw pole-pieces or slugs just as easily, but the blade was just a simpler solution. And since they were going to be smooth-tops anyway, we figured it wouldn't make any difference. We could use Alnico pole-pieces but we may not achieve the tone or output we were shooting for and, to my knowledge, we can't get ceramic rod magnets in the shape we need to do that (maybe a custom order?), but even so, we would end up back with the whole string-pull/ice-pick problem.

[oipunkguy]

i been winding some different pickups using 44 wire and it seems to me that it tends to make the pickups too ice pick like to my taste. it seems to be the case in higher and lower output windings. on other pickups I wound using 42 I liked the tone, but i havent had a chance to use 43 yet. what would you suggest where to get good 43 wire?

[raygun85]

Don't forget that the physical dimensions of the coil will also make a noticeable difference in tone. Also, the kind of materials you use in the pickups have a bearing on the resultant tone. Generally, the more metal you have, the more likely you'll experience eddy current losses and vice versa. As Tony Hunt has reminded us frequently, the tension on the coil makes a difference in the tone. Generally, tighter coils will give you more high end, but this isn't always necessarily the case because if you wind it too tight, you could be stretching the wire and thereby increasing more resistance per turn, and lowering the resonant peak. The variables involved in pickup making are nearly endless. Personally, I feel that looser tension on the coil will allow the wire to resonate more as the oscillations from the magnetic field move through the coil, producing a more organic tone, maybe a bit fatter too. I think that is partly what gives Mosrite pickups their sound. Of course, they're more prone to microphonic noises too. Potting the pickups can take care of that, but then you may lose some of that natural warmth. (I don't hear any difference in tone myself, but even so it's probably an equitable trade-off.)

Generally, it will take fewer turns to reach the desired amount of DC resistance with 44 gauge wire than 43 or 42 because the resistance is proportionate to it's cross-sectional length. With that in mind, you can wind a thinner coil with the same amount of resistance as a 42 or 43. Narrower coils tend to sound brighter because they sense a shorter section of the guitar strings, so there will be less variations in the oscillation patterns. So all of these factors could be contributing to differences you hear.

[oipunkguy]

that may have been some of the issues I been dealing with. I been winding tight coils with 44 wire. i'll have to try some different winding techniques with 43 wire.