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What Makes Bad Humbuckers So Muddy?


Elias Graves

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I don't think its necessary one specific thing, but more likely a combination of ill suited build / combinations that don't play well together. Factors like coil shape, number of turns, magnet type and strength all have an influence on the end result.

 

Its like, I enjoy a good cup of coffee and I love Tabasco sauce in my chili, but Tabasco in my coffee ... not so much.

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I think it may come from an over-abundance of bass frequencies in the effects/strings/amps. That's certainly the case with my RG, anyway. Using the big 100W as a power amp and the Frontman 15G as a preamp, I've managed to clean up the tone a little so low power chords don't sound like thunder. The low tuning and heavy gauge strings probably don't help.

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Interesting. The first time I yanked cheapo pickups and upgraded, I was shocked. I've learned since then that good humbuckers don't have to cost an arm and leg. Why do manufacturers still put junk in so many guitars? Seems like you could sell more if you supplied decent guts.

 

EG

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I've always wondered this too. And, if there is a secret, then why doesn't everyone copy it for less money? I mean, if it just comes down to material cost (i.e., the metal used in pickups that sound good is more expensive), then I guess I can understand that, even though I don't understand it. But, if it's just a manufacturing process, then why don't Duncan Designed sound exactly like USA Duncans?

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I was shocked to the core when I bought a guitar with a set of low output passives that it had been the sound I'd been chasing for decades. I've got guitars with single coils, medium output humbuckers, high output active humbuckers, high output singles, etc. All of them were "okay" but the ones that amazed me was the low output passives.

 

Somehow, the low output allowed for a "clarity of tone" without adding mud and being strong enough to overdrive an amp decently.

 

My previous impression was that low output humbuckers were weak, gruff and lacked nice trebles - just kind of "bleah". How wrong I was.

 

It seems that some of the high output pickups sacrificed tone and balance in favor of massive output.

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On the high output = muddy debate - I really rate the burstbucker pros in my LP Studio - sure, they're a high output pickup, but they clean up fairly well as you back off the volume and don't sound muddy at all.

 

Personally, I'm not too keen on them for my style - I play a lot of blues and 70s-inspired rock / prog - but they're good pickups and I think the tone is pretty well defined. But then they are Gibsons so you'd expect them to be fairly good pickups!

 

I also find that better amps give you less mud - my old old old Peavey Classic (1970s model!) gives a much muddier sound than my Cornford.

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Funny you mention pots. I tested a bunch of Alpha 500s yesterday. Most measured between 350 and 400. I found one that read 475 and that was the highest.


EG

 

 

350? That's out of spec. And that's saying something because they are speced at +- 20% IIRC. I must have gotten lucky last time I got some, they all measured in the 480s.

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350? That's out of spec. And that's saying something because they are speced at +- 20% IIRC. I must have gotten lucky last time I got some, they all measured in the 480s.

 

 

Yeah, I measured 8 I had laying around for a project. I finally grabbed my last 2 Gibson pots and tossed the others into the box.

 

The Gibsons measured 498 and 500, BTW.

 

 

EG

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What makes HBs muddy is having them wound too hot all other factors being equal. As you add more winds, the trebble is reduced through increased inductance. Thats it.

 

As a rule, if you want a wider frequency range, get a pickup with lower coil resistance. It likely has less winds and lower inductance. You can increase magnet strength and get a louder signal but you can only go so far with they because a magnet would be physically larger and the magnets pull on the strings and cause buzzing and intonation problems. Alnico magnets were favored because they had a strong field for a compact size.

 

A typical PAF will have a resistance of about 5~7.5K. (2X2 singe coil pups) with about 5000 turns of #42 plain enamel wire. http://home.provide.net/~cfh/paf.html You go much above that and you start loosing high frequency responce in trade for a littel more gain until it turns to mutey mud. You can always add gain in a guitar chain but you cant enhance frequencies that dosnt exist. Trying to dial up a a decent frequency responce on hot wound pups over 10K is an act of futility. it just aint gonna happen.

 

By the way if you know anyone who likes hot wound pups I got about 10 sets in my parts cab I've collected over the years. I pull them out of guitars doing mods and getting customers guitars to sound good. In nearly all cases they thought they would get better tone with a hot wound pup and find it was a mistake when shown the difference between the different pups. pups need to be matched to the amp. Any tome you see a pup hot wound its likely going to sound muddy compared to whatever they were copying.

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Sorry for late contribution here, I only discovered this information since this thread's last post.

The reason that humbuckers sound muddy is a fundalmental flaw in their design which I discovered in 2011.  Seth Lover's brief from Ted McCarty, and his goal, was to silence the P-90. Gibson humbuckers were derivitave from the P-90 because back in 1955 Seth Lover divided the P-90 into halves and wired the 2 coils in a hum canceling arrangement. The two pickups have a lot of commonality, 10,000 turns of 42 gauge wire, the same coil height and core dimensions, the same Alnico bar magnets and the same pole screws ..... so what went wrong?

Some argue that humbuckers sense the strings at 2 points which causes harmonic cancelation, baloney. There is no cancelation because everything is in-phase.

Some argue it's the different magnetic circuit, baloney again. Magnetism may be a slippery customer but it can't cause such a dramatic loss of articulation as in the case of humbuckers. Actually the humbuckers magnetic circuit is extraordinarily efficient giving rise to a lot of Mutual Inductance (2+2=6)

Some say scatterwinding makes them sound better, baloney three times!!!!  I have done scientific tests and compared scatter winding, cross-over winding, zigzag winding, wave winding and a host of others with a level playing field with standardized winding tension.  My ears confirm what the laboratory instruments were telling me, there is very little if any difference at audio frequencies.  These capacitance lowering winding techniques only come into play at radio frequencies and are far too small to impact on sonic frequencies. Scatter winding is nothing more than a marketing myth, sorry fellas.

The real cause of murky sounding humbuckers is the design of the coils.  There is a little known and less understood Law of Physics that causes really bad things to happen when coils are arranged side-by-side as in a humbucker.  I don't want to be specific for obvious reasons.  I always had a gut feeling about this but to discover the fact's scientifically took approx 57 years. I have been trying to discover the reason humbuckers sound murky and have ice-pick for years and having made the discovery I was able to devise solutions.  One such solution can be heard here

This is one of my regular humbuckers that incorporates my patented technology.

However I am just about to release a breath-taking new model that I have named the P90-Bucker because it fulfils Seth Lovers brief in 1955 .... and that is to deliver realistic P-90 sound ....... in a regular humbucking side-by-side format with a closed top  cover so it looks exactly the same as a regular humbucker. 

Because it suffers from none of the usual problems this pickup is living proof that regular humbuckers have a severe design flaw that noone has even suspected, let alone solved.

In the neck position the low strings are well defined and actually very transparent with a lot of piano tones (the true sound of the string).  Also no ice pick spikes and 100% definitely no mud.  The sound is delivered with a very nice lively th-wack charactreistic of a great P-90.  It actually delivers authentic P-90 sound without 60Hz hum, no BS.

Chris Kinman (Kinman Guitar Electrix)

 

 

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If you participate on the forum, people will probably appreciate it. But lots of people scream spam when makers push products without someone asking first. It's reasonable, really.

 

Interesting info. Anyway, not all humbuckers are muddy or ice-picky. Many sound great.

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To be fair he didn't link to his commercial website, just a youtube demonstration. This certainly has more content of value than most spam I have seen. I do find it maddening that Mr. Kinman won't name which law of physics specifically, but I suspect he may be waiting on a patent. I love original style P-90's and old humbuckers in almost equal measure, but my interest is piqued nonetheless. Worst case scenario, I have a great excuse for my wife as to why I will need to buy a new guitar.

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kayd_mon

thanks for your comments.  Firstly, you say not all humbuckers sound muddy.  In my experience the low E and A strings always suffer the most with a kind of muffled, indistinct sound.  This was bought home to me recently when I played a guitar with Gretsch Filtertrons which I had the impression were a bright twangy pickup.  I found the twang (if you could call it that) was only on the middle strings and it seemed more like low level Ice Pick to my ears. More the result of midrange spikes that cause Ice Pick.  The low strings (E and A) were the biggest shock, soggy (the opposite of crisp), very indistinct and utterly toneless.  It's strange that none of the other 4 guitar players present at the time noticed it.  But when I pointed it out to them they became visibly shaken and confused.  They had the same impression about Filtertrons as I had, and faced with the shocking truth they kind of went into denial but couldn't because the truth was right before them.  Eventually they had no other option than to agree.

 

I became very curious about this so I Googled the topic and found literally thousands of players complaining about the very thing with Filtertrons I pointed out to my friends.

 

I did the same thing with regular Gibson type humbuckers and found even more players complaining about the low wound strings.  Of course that was no surprise since I had been receiving similar complaints from customers (like the people who posted here) for many many years.

 

I have a pretty strong hunch that regardless of how lovely a humbucker can sound on the top 4 strings there is always gonna be a strong element of indistinct, toneless and murky on the two low wound strings.  I also have a hunch that this characteristic has driven guitar players to habitually avoid the 2 low strings, thus many solos are played solely on the top 4.  Personally I love the sound of full toned low notes so I have noticed the strong tendancy of guitar players to avoid them with humbuckers.

 

If you doubt this pick two guitars from your fine collection and compare a humbucker directly to a P-90 or practically any other single coil through the same amp at room volume and that's what will become evident (I suspect).  The low wounds of the humbucker will lack the stringy sound or as I call it piano sound, they also lack the attack that single coils have.

 

This has been the big mystery with humbuckers since the day Seth Lover invented his pickup.  Seth was not aware of the Law of Physics that is responsible for this, and neither was anyone else, least of all J.R Butts, included.  Since practically all of todays humbuckers are derived or copied from Seth's pickup they inherit the same flaw.

 

The conundrum is that important discoveries like this one are never gonna be found by someone tinkering in his garage.  This was not luck, it took lots of scientific investigating and that kind of work can only be funded from a Commercial Operation with the knowhow and equipment.  My intense curiosity, technical experience in this field (I have 6 or 7 Electrical Engineering patents concerned with guitar pickups) and my desire/drive to improve products with problems positioned me to make the discovery.  Or as the old addage goes >>> Luck is something that's created over time based on action and dedication.

The way I see it it's not something I need apologize for .... and thanks for the wiggle room.

 

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