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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on April 29, 2018 at 8:45am

That rotating pickup would be cool to do on a test box. Find the sweet spot and then take that pickup and mount it at that angle in a CBG. As long as the pickup is potted (wax coated) correctly you will get the exact same amplified sound. This wouldn't work for hand wound, non or poorly potted pickups. Because the resonants of the box used will sound through the pickup. 

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Permalink Reply by Taffy Evans on April 29, 2018 at 11:54am

I recon that many top builders back in the day like Fender and Gibson did all this pickup sorting prior to settling on the final positions for their pickups.

But just for my understanding I have a guitar on the bench waiting for a pickup/s installation like we are taking about. What's that saying?.......the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Will be interesting to hear how the pickup reads the same string in 6 different places at the same time.

I'll be back...........but don't hold your breath. Now where's my white lab coat?...........

Taff

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on April 29, 2018 at 2:14pm

There are some manufactured guitars with angled pickups. But they are all at slight angles. 

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Permalink Reply by Kigar on April 29, 2018 at 1:56pm

While I do believe most if not all of the reasonings above are valid, why not set up a tall bridge and just place the darn thing under the strings and see what happens?

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Permalink Reply by Korrigan on April 29, 2018 at 3:29pm

Yup, somebody's gotta be the guinea pig, might as well be you Wal.  : )

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Permalink Reply by Taffy Evans on April 29, 2018 at 4:45pm

Hi, I could not find the lab coat, but I started on the project anyway.

With the understanding that "if you always do it the same way....you'll always get the same result" here goes, of course those of you that can are all welcome to do your own investigations. 

Here's how I started.

I routed out an old body, fitted a neck, selected some pickups as test samples, chose  the pickup that I thought would give the best result and fitted it. 

Next:  fit some tuners, bridge and tailpiece and test. I'll try to do that tonight.

Cheers Taff

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Permalink Reply by Korrigan on April 29, 2018 at 5:32pm

That's awesome Taff, looking forward to your results.

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Permalink Reply by Taffy Evans on April 30, 2018 at 12:05pm

Hi, well no surprises found. Most of what I found had been foreseen by contributors to this thread.

Most important, and pretty obvious, was that the middle string had very little volume compared to the others when played on its own, and could not be heard at all if played as part of a chord. And this pickup has two rows pole pieces going down into the magnets.

Also, I'm not into physics and maths, but as I mentioned earlier it would be interesting to hear how the pickup reads a range of harmonics along the string instead of at a selected part of the string, where the harmonic may be at its strongest.

What I noticed was a slight unevenness in the sound, like two or more different frequencies causing a vibrato effect. I likened this to an effect that occurs at times in Fender Strat guitars It happens when the centre pickup is used along with the bridge or neck pickups, its commonly known as "Stratitus". It is removed with pickup adjustments.

I think the volume was greater with the pickup orientated this way, for the outside strings anyway. I tested this by lowering the back and/or front of the pickup away from the strings and the volume dropped noticeably.

Make of this what you will. Cheers Taff

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Permalink Reply by Korrigan on April 30, 2018 at 12:15pm

Pretty cool Taff, thanks for that. Now it seems to me the thing to do would be to add a single coil for the middle string at the bridge end. Should be more treble, more of a lead tone, then use the middle string for most of your melody playing.  : )

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Permalink Reply by Taffy Evans on April 30, 2018 at 12:46pm

Ha ha, good one Korrigan , I recon the thing to do is use a three string pickup, they are cheap as. I just got 5 of them.

Taff

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on April 30, 2018 at 7:25pm

I've thought about using 6 of these on a 6 string guitar arranged like a G&L Comanche. 3 groups of 2 pickups wired in parallel or maybe a parallel/series option.

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Permalink Reply by David L. on May 1, 2018 at 1:15am

Hi Korrigan,

For a six string guitar I used a middle pickup (humbucker size with a single coil and a minihumbucker) and a precision bass cut to make two 4 pole single coil pickups.  One 4 pole was placed near the neck covering the EADG strings and one at the bridge to cover the DGBe strings.  Small disc piezos were fitted under the bridge.

Pickups were then wired via individual switches (minihumbucker also for series/split/parallel).

Where possible with coil tappable humbuckers I add the series/single coil/parallel mod to get the slightly different tones from the one pickup and also add piezos.  By comparison the change in tone on adding the bass pickups is far greater - the neck one (bass strings) boosts the bass, the bridge one (treble strings) adds more treble and adding both boosts both, but because the DG strings are sensed twice it gives a greater mid range boost.

Basically it works exactly as you would expect only better (0:

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