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Topic: Pickup pole piece adjustments |
Jon Light (deceased)
From:
Saugerties, NY
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Posted 23 Sep 2006 7:14 am |
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I can vagulely understand the electronic principals of dual coil hum cancelling but I've never understood the sonic principals of dual coil humbuckers regarding the positioning of the poles.
If I have a dual coil pickup with adjustable coils, if I were to raise the pole piece closer to the string on the coil farther away from the bridge and lower the bridge-side coil away from the string, would I in effect be moving the 'sweet spot' away from the bridge? And vice versa? Could I gain the effect of angling the pickup (or the staggered config of a P-bass split pickup) by selectively adjusting the pole pieces on the treble & bass strings? Or do dual coil pickups want the two coils to be balanced?
Of course I'm messing around and doing my own discoveries but I'd be interested in other observations and experiences as to whether these adjustments are only to balance the ouput of individual strings or if I can also gain some tonal nuance out of the adjustments. |
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Jon Light (deceased)
From:
Saugerties, NY
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Posted 25 Sep 2006 1:13 pm
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| Since this subject actually interests me (and wasn't just me being bored on a Saturday morning) I think I'll just go and bump it, right.........now! |
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Eric West
From:
Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.
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Posted 26 Sep 2006 6:51 pm
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Jon. I was looking for this the othe night for you and got swamped with worldly things.
Heres' a Steel Guitar Page with Instructions for AP PUs I found
Searching my TDPRI.com Tele Forum yielded some things, and my Google Search turned up a bunch of stuff.
I've come to find that it's not exactly how you'd think, and that somehow magnetic fields are not as strict as one would think, yielding a "dead spot" sometimes where you wouldn't think there would be one.
I've done "trial and error" on my G&L AP Pickups, and had my JW Single Coil SHobuds made with poles higher under the thinner wound strings gradually down to flush for the 10ths. I liked the result. They are not adjustable.
Hope some of that info helps.
Gotta run.
EJL |
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Jon Light (deceased)
From:
Saugerties, NY
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Posted 27 Sep 2006 10:28 am
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Thanks for taking note of this.
I have such a poor objective ear. I have a hard time making a tweak and then having confidence in my perception of change. Or lack thereof. I can easily talk myself into believing that some small adjustment made a difference. I might make a tone adjustment--at the pickup, at the amp, whatever--for a rounder tone and then go forth and apply a rounder touch with my picking hand and say 'yeah, that adjustment really worked.'
I'm going to keep at the pole piece stuff, just because it's there, it's adjustable, and there's real potential to get this right, in a killer sort of way. |
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David Doggett
From:
Bawl'mer, MD (formerly of MS, Nawluns, Gnashville, Knocksville, Lost Angeles, Bahsten. and Philly)
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Posted 27 Sep 2006 5:39 pm
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| Awhile back, Paul Franklin said he tried angling the pickup on a pedal steel and couldn't hear any difference. Just adjusting a dual coil to shift the pickup sensitivity further from the bridge would seem to have even less an effect. You can get a big effect by picking an octave above the bar rather than near the changer. You don't have to be precisely at an octave, because the frets are so close together toward the changer end of the neck. So if you just pick in the vicinity of the octave spot, it has a big effect on tone. |
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