Gibson mini humbuckers?

[niceguy]

Anyone using recent Gibson mini humbuckers? I'm looking to put some in my Gibson Midtown. I dislike P90s, and I have a Les Paul and a Strat. I think minis might be a flavor I'm missing.

[WRGKMC]

I love them. I do have guitars with regular HB's P90's singles, and even P100's, but the Minis have a great unique tone you cant get from any of the others.

You can get a great cranked tone without all the bottom end flab and you can crank the knob back 1/8 to 1/4 turn and they clean up and sound like a P90 except a bit richer.

 

You do have to use the vintage impedance winds though, Either the stock Gibson which were just under 6K or one of the other well made ones. There are some hot wound minis out there that sound quite awful. I tried some Artec Firebird type that were wound hot at 9~13K and they had way too much drive and when you turned them down they didn't clean up. With vintage Winds you can get a half driven, half clean tones that are very articulate. You get some strat tone mixed with Humbucker tones will blend with Fender guitars just as well as they do with Gibsons. Your early Johnny Winter Records had Johnny using either a LP Deluxe with Minis or A firebird, playing along with Derringer using an ES 335. Those two guitars blended amazingly well together and you could tell each guitarist apart in a mix. You can pump allot of highs too without them getting harsh.

 

You can buy The Vintage wound Artecs very cheap and they nearly match the Gibsons for tone and drive. I have two sets in guitars with the Artec and I'd have a hard time telling the difference between the Gibsons I have in another guitar.

 

The tough item is if you are going to install them in a guitar that has P90's the way the minis have the plastic surrounc requires a metal bar at the bottom of the route where the machine screws screw into the bar for pickup height. You may be able to rig thin wood screws to screw into the wood instead. The hole tabs on the gibson pickups are unthreaded and the screw just goes through them. Then thay solder nuts above and below the tabs to keep the pickup at the proper height within the plastic surround. When you spin the screws they spin freely without affecting the plastic surround height, but they adjust the surround and pickup height together when screwed into the mounting bar. The bars are very hard to find because thay work with both P90's and Minis so someone swapping pickups will keep the original gibsons in their guitar.

 

Here's the Artecs I mentioned. These are a tad hot but close enough. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Artec-Vintage-Authentic-Hollow-Classic-Alnico-2-Mini-Humbucker-Neck-Pickup-/151270403120?pt=Guitar_Accessories&hash=item23386b2c30

 

These are the ones I first tried. Wound too hot and in turn dont have a good tone. http://www.ebay.com/itm/2pcs-Belcat-Chrome-Mini-Guitar-Pickup-Ferrite-For-Les-Paul-Humbucker-Coil-Pickup-/360666687063?pt=Guitar_Accessories&hash=item53f968e657

 

These Seymours arent bad. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Seymour-Duncan-Antiquity-II-Mini-Humbucker-Pickup-Set-FREE-Ernie-Ball-Strings-/371045748731?pt=Guitar_Accessories&hash=item56640ccffb

 

If you can afford it just go with the Original Gibsons, The neck and Bridge have two different impedances. The neck is usually 50~75 ohms less and have winds between 5.5~6.5K ranges. .

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gibson-Mini-Humbucker-Pickup-/271468481046?pt=Guitar_Accessories&hash=item3f34c84a16

[niceguy]

Thanks, WRGKMC! Good to see a familiar screenname here

 

So get this: my Midtown already has the metal plate in the pickup cavities for installing mini-humbuckers! I'm going for it; gonna buy some pickups from ebay. There are a lot of mini's pulled out of the recent Gibson Tribute series of guitars.

 

I'm psyched! I think this will fill out my tone collection perfectly.

[WRGKMC]

Yea its a killer tone. I prefer it over just about all other pickups, especially for recording.

can track a guitar and add "No" additional EQ and it sits there perfectly in the mix.

Plus you can crank the bass up on an amp to get a beefy tone without the speakers getting farty.

 

One of my First guitars was a 60's Epiphone Rivera. I'd plug that into My Blackface Bassman and just crank it

without any pedals and would get great classic early stones rock tones. I later got a LP Gold Top Deluxe with Minis around 1974

and it too had those same great tones.

 

For some reason, I got away from using Minis through the 80's through 2000. I did but another LP in 1991 with P100's but those pickups

though close, really aren't the same.

 

A mini is has a tone between a full HB and P90.

 

P100's are between a mini and P90, so even though Thay came close they just weren't the same thing.

I got back to including the mini's in some of my builds about 10 years ago and cant get enough of them.

 

When I switch to playing my Tele, Strat, Or P90 Guitars its like its lacking some beef and the pickup touch needs to be harder.

The full sized HB's are great, but they're a different thing. Thay pick up a wide area of the strings and are less focused.

 

I do have a Ricenbacker with the Toaster Pups. They do give similar tones to the P100's. Half way between a P90 and Mini

even though they are single coils. There's not allot of tonal differences between the neck and bridge though and the tone gets boring pretty quickly.

 

With the Minis and two Volumes you can get all kinds of cool blended tones and either used separately sound great.

 

Good luck. Let us know how they sound.

[PunkKitty]

I have a set of BG minis that I can sell you. PM me if you're interested.

[Ratae Corieltauvorum]

You can buy The Vintage wound Artecs very cheap and they nearly match the Gibsons for tone and drive. I have two sets in guitars with the Artec and I'd have a hard time telling the difference between the Gibsons I have in another guitar.

 

Thats very useful info man, cheers. I have a permanent serach on Ebay for Gibson used mini, and have a collection of 7, as the 70s minis with P90 surround are sweet as a nut, but to know there's something out there that's not SD Antiquities which are excellent is very good to know. Can the Artecs be used with a P90

[WRGKMC]

Can the Artecs be used with a P90

 

Good Question. To tell you the truth I've never tried combining the two. I have played a Gibson Nighthawk which has a mini, single and HB and they do blend well. I also have one build with a HB and mini. It originally had a HB and a P90 but the P90 was too anemic to compete with the HB cranked.

 

It will likely work if you have a vintage wind in the 5K region. If the Mini's impedance is too high, it's signal wont blend well with the P90 and when you have both cranked, the Mini may overpower and dominate the blend. There are some avenues of balancing their outputs like using different volume pots. Maybe using a 500K on the P90 and a 300 on the mini, but its just one of those things you have to try first hand to know.

 

If I were to guess, the mini would make any kind of gain staging like a pedal or guitar preamp to break up before a P90 would, but having a P90 in the neck position may give you a fat tele tone. A Tele has a hot bridge and weak/clean neck tone and the two work very well together so maybe they would be a good combination.

 

I do have a semi hollow body build that has two Dog Ear P90's that I'm going to revamp at some time. The Body is an old Teisco and the only pickups I had that wee wide enough for the holes were the Dog ears which just barely fit. The problem is the pups are too high and I have to have the neck high in the pocket. I got it to work but its a sucky player for tuning with a shimmed neck.

 

I had planned on cutting my own pickup rings that were long enough and put some minis in that guitar. The bridge does have enough clearance so maybe I'll try a mini and a P90 together. If it sucks I'l just continue over to the bridge and replace that one too.

 

I do have one Gold Foil I found which does fit the guitar. It needs a new lead because someone cut it off right at the pup. Its another option I haven't gotten around to trying. Gold foils are supposed to sound good, especially for slide, but for aesthetics and tone I'd like to have a pair that matched pair.

 

Like I said, the vintage wound Artecs are the way to go. I bought 4 pairs for around $25 a pair. I think a couple are in the 6~7K range and the last set I got were in the 5~6K range. I still have to try that last set out, but I think that's the key to their best tone. They use the right materials but they overwind so many of them and the tone just turns to mud. I have one that's wound to 13K and It didn't stay in the guitar for more than a day. It was awful. Many of the so called vintage ones being sold are up in the 9K region and that's just too high to capture the tone. 7K may be useful if you like a hot sounding pickup but that's pretty much the limit.

 

The artecs also have the 4 conductor wiring so you can wire them in series parallel, and coil tap them. I haven't messed with them to see if the taps sound any good. I'd prefer the standard Gibson wiring because all that extra wire adds unneeded resistance and capacitance that can suck tone. Gibson got it right the first time when they designed the pickups. They had real engineers who knew their math and had a good set of ears when they built them.

 

Most generic pups are made by some guy in his garage or some low tech company who buys the pre fab parts and all they do is wind bobbins and assemble the pickups. The magnets are already charged and the only thing the makers have control over is the winds. If you want maximum tone/fidelity vs maximum strength there's only one ideal peak that can be obtained based on the Henry's of the coil vs the magnet strength. If you add more winds you trade high frequency for gain. If you under wind the coil it may clean up but you loose gain.

 

If the pickup maker has the ability to charge their own magnets, then you have the ability to tweak two factors in the pickups design and move the peak fidelity and gain along the graph. The limits will be based un the maximum/minimum magnet strength vs the winds but you have wide range of tone options when you control both factors. You could just as easily fill a bobbin size then try different magnet charge levels to find optimum tone balance as you could the more difficult route of figuring out how many winds it takes to give you the best tones.

 

The purity of the metal used as slugs inside the coils is a factor too. If the core is iron, steel, nickel alloys it too will affect the sound quality. There were a few makers like Seymour and Dimarzio that made minis as replacements. Those companies had the R&D to come up with a good design. Both Gibson and theses others kept their builds confidential and the pickups have remains high in cost to this day. What I suspect happened, is these companies started having their spare parts manufactured overseas. Since countries like Korea and China have no business ethics and follow no international patent laws they just took the designs and found a market direct to the public. They are still low tech in most cases.

 

The Artec fails in pickup building when they try to manipulate the design jacking with pickup winds or using substitute materials. I've tried many Artec pickups besides the Minis. All the hot winds suck badly. If you can find the builds that have a wind that matches an original like a PAF or Filteron, then the pickup can be as close to an original as you can find. The hot winds however use the same magnets and you get that trade off I mentioned. Companies like Guitar Fetish exploit the "Hot Wound For Extra Power" Bull Crap as a selling point to amateur guitarists and they get suckered into thinking more gain is better. Their amps preamp saturates when they install them and they thing its the path their favorite artists use to get mega metal tone. They don't realize most of that tone comes from the amps and pedals and when you start with mad tone coming from the pickup it only gets worse as you add additional gain staging.

 

So my point comes down to, seek the vintage winds on the minis. The rest of the parts that make up the build are as close to being identical as far as I can see. Maybe they aren't using the same Kevlar coated wire or the bobbin material is slightly different. Those are likely the small differences that make the Actual Gibson's sound a tad better. The cloth/mesh Gibson leads probably conduct better and have less capacitance then the thin plastic 4 conductor leads. I've seen a few aftermarket pups using the Gibson leads lately and it doesn't take anything to stamp a Gibson patent label on the base, so you have to be real careful on buying counterfit minis now.

 

All the original Minis from the 60's and 70's had the black and white decal on them that said Patent Pending and had a number on them. The lid was soldered on and had a smooth solder joint with no cold soldering joints. If you see the solder rounded on the ends it means they were not factory soldered, they were soldered on with an underpowered iron and the solder doesn't flow over the base.

The counterfeiters have gotten real good at making knockoffs now. The best thing you can do is investigate the seller. If his ID leads to the orient you can be assured he's selling a counterfeit. If he's using a US ID as a front, the shipping time is a give away. It takes a week or two to ship from the orient. Domestically its 3~4 days plus you can track its origin. That's not going to help you if its someone buying in bulk overseas then selling on EBay, but everything helps. main thing is the solder joint. If its broken or looks funky they likely opened it to switch it to a Gibson wire lead or even swapped the guts out. you need a big high watt iron to get a good solder joint in the first attempt and if you see a bunch of solder flux, or wavy solder joint you know its been tampered with.

[Jazzer2020]

Yea its a killer tone. I prefer it over just about all other pickups, especially for recording.

can track a guitar and add "No" additional EQ and it sits there perfectly in the mix.

Plus you can crank the bass up on an amp to get a beefy tone without the speakers getting farty...

 

 

P100's are between a mini and P90, so even though Thay came close they just weren't the same thing.

I got back to including the mini's in some of my builds about 10 years ago and cant get enough of them.

 

Hey WRG you have inspired me into picking up a mini.

 

I'm in a situation with my Gibson ES-125TC where I would like to get a sound closer to a full HB.

I replaced my P90 on it with a P100 and though it was an improvement (darker sound) it still didn't come close to a HB sound.

 

I'm after two things: more output, and a darker, fuller, rich sound that I get with my 57 HBer's on my ES-135.

I know I won't be able to get the same sound as my 135 due to the different body construction, but do you think I will come close to what I'm looking for?

 

BTW, I have a spare HB kicking around (it's the bridge HB from my ES-175 that I removed). I think it's a 57 HB, though I'm not sure.

 

If I were to put that in my ES-125 I'd have to cut away some wood on the guitar top.

 

Which of the two (HB or mini) would you recommend?

 

One last question. You were talking about nice cranked tones with the mini.

If I were playing in a rock/blues style that would be cool, but I play mostly jazz on my guitars.

Will the mini (Gibson) be able to deliver great tone and still not break up?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FrankenTelly]

As far as Gibbo mini-humbuckers go, I like the Firebird variety the most. I believe the recent SG 70s Trubute uses a slightly hotter wound Firebird pickup.

 

 

[niceguy]

WR, you're ruling this topic Thanks, I'm going to buy some vintage wound minis from eBay. I always prefer gibson, but I'll consider Duncan too. I just hate their S stamped on the chrome cover. I think the minis will really make my Midtown into a very unique animal.

[niceguy]

Oh heyday, I just found that dimarzio released a new set of minis. The reviews from various parts of the web state that these minis are clear and designed specifically to cut out the mud. For example, my favorite way to play clean is to just lay into the strings really fuc.king hard in the neck pickup of my Strat. No way can you do that with a neck humbuckers. But apparently, you can play that way with the new dimarzio minis. And the simple chrome covers are great. I think I'll give those a shot, then review them here.

[Jazzer2020]

OK, I just picked up my Gibson mini and want to install it. I actually removed my P-100 and soldered the mini to the volume pot.

The problem is that the mini is much smaller than the P-100. The P-100 has the same housing that the P90 had.

The mini has a smaller housing that doesn't even come close to the screw holes and to make matters worse, there is no plate to attach the housing to, even if the holes matched up.

 

I don't have a clue how to proceed.

Any guidance?

The pickup is going into a Gibson ES-125TC.

 

Edit....

 

OK I now have a plan.

I enlarged the pickup whole just a bit so the pickup cover now can make it through.

I am going to go to the hardware store and 'pick up' a thin metal plate.

 

Then I'm going to drill holes in it so that:

 

a: the pickup can be screwed into it.

b: the original pickup cover screws can go through the holes in the guitar top and then into the plate.

 

I'll let you know how it goes in the next few days or so.

 

I'm going to have fun fishing the jack, and pickups through the f-holes...

[ugameus]

I have a set of Lollar Firebird minis. Incredible pickups.

[Jazzer2020]

I have a set of Lollar Firebird minis. Incredible pickups.

 

I saw his Youtube video on installing his minis. How do they compare with Gibson's mini?

[ugameus]

The Firebirds are different than regular minis. I have never tried Gibson Firebird minis.

[Jazzer2020]

Time for a followup on my installation.

It took some patience and perseverance but the job has been completed.

The Mini has been installed into my ES-125TC.

 

I'll start with the biggest surprise first. Now I must warn you this is really gross.

This guitar always had a musty, slightly disagreeable smell which I had attributed to the previous owner probably being a smoker and such.

 

I've had the guitar now for about ten years and it has always smelled that way.

So I'm opening up the guitar, taking out the P100 and I notice some yellowish stuff hiding away in an upper bout close to the neck.

 

I stick my hand in as best as I can through the pickup hole but it's really tight.

I manage to pull off a bit of this yellow 'stuff'.

 

As I said it was really gross looking and smelling. It could have been an old bird's nest for all I know.

That's what it looked like.

 

I believe it was simply discolored cotton batting (rotting too). Well I kept pulling out more and more of the stuff. I took photos too and you wouldn't believe just how much of it came out!

 

That would also explain why the sound of the guitar was always so dead acoustically (and to an extent electrically as well).

 

Installing the mini was tricky. I had to build a support. I decided to go with a wood support rather than metal, to save a bit on the weight.

 

The sound:

 

I was expecting/hoping for a humbucker 57 type sound only not as powerful.

Totally different though.

This has not much more juice that my P90/P100 had.

It has its own voice to be sure.

Not as warm and mellow as I was hoping for (I play mostly jazz).

But the nice thing about it is that it would cut through in a band

much easier than a P100 would.

 

It's kind of in between a P90 and P100, but as I say still a unique type of voice.

 

I'm not convinced 100% that I'll stick with it.

I'm giving it a real test, running it through all the paces.

 

I would love to install either my 57 Humbucker (bridge) or a new neck one on the guitar but a couple of things are holding me back:

 

Their weight. This mini is lighter than all the other pickups mentioned.

The size. I would have to do some major surgery on the top to get it to fit the hole.

 

 

 

 

[WRGKMC]

OK, I just picked up my Gibson mini and want to install it. I actually removed my P-100 and soldered the mini to the volume pot.

The problem is that the mini is much smaller than the P-100. The P-100 has the same housing that the P90 had.

The mini has a smaller housing that doesn't even come close to the screw holes and to make matters worse, there is no plate to attach the housing to, even if the holes matched up.

 

I don't have a clue how to proceed.

Any guidance?

The pickup is going into a Gibson ES-125TC.

 

Edit....

 

OK I now have a plan.

I enlarged the pickup whole just a bit so the pickup cover now can make it through.

I am going to go to the hardware store and 'pick up' a thin metal plate.

 

Then I'm going to drill holes in it so that:

 

a: the pickup can be screwed into it.

b: the original pickup cover screws can go through the holes in the guitar top and then into the plate.

 

I'll let you know how it goes in the next few days or so.

 

I'm going to have fun fishing the jack, and pickups through the f-holes...

 

You're supposed to use a plastic pickup surround on a mini that makes it the same size as a P90 or P100.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Set-Of-2...-/390796706235

 

If you have a flat mount.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Chrome-plated-Mini-Humbucker-Metal-Mounting-Ring-/121325292277

 

Or if you want to put them in a full sized HB hole.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Humbucker-to-Mini-Humbucker-Adapter-Pickup-Ring-WHITE-A71-/221072106163

 

Or for an Epi Riveria type mount.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1960s-Epiphone-Mini-Humbucker-Pickup-Rings-Wilshire-Crestwood-pair-/351069972582

[Jazzer2020]

 

You're supposed to use a plastic pickup surround on a mini that makes it the same size as a P90 or P100.

 

If you have a flat mount.

 

Or if you want to put them in a full sized HB hole.

 

 

Or for an Epi Riveria type mount.

 

Thanks for helping out WRG!

It's too bad I have already finished my installation.

 

I don't know which of the four surrounds would have worked out better in my case.

 

The problem I faced was that the pickup was solid inside its plastic surround.

This is because they soldered the screw to the nut holding the pickup inside the surround.

 

I didn't feel like unsoldering the nut so I left things as they were and tried to work with what I had.

 

I'll post a few photos of what I went through.

[Jazzer2020]

Here are some of the photos.

First the gross cotton junk, then the finished installation.

 

After I had the wood cut and installed using the outer holes on the top, I tried to fasten the pickup to it.

It couldn't reach it however.

 

I had to cut a second piece and attach it to the first, a quarter inch or so above it.

Then the pickup screws could reach it.

 

I have left the pickup wire exposed near the f-hole for the time being.

As I was making the adjustments I didn't know if I'd be taking the pickup out again.

Now that it will stay at least for the next little while and the wire doesn't rattle, I'll just leave it be.

 

If you have any suggestions for how to hide the wire inside and guarantee it won't rattle, I'm all ears.

 

 

 

 

[WRGKMC]

Pictures didn't post so I cant give you any recommendations.

[Jazzer2020]

Really? That's strange. When I log in here and view the post above yours I can see three photos with text above them. Can you see the text? It's the first time I've tried posting photos. Any tips to get them to be seen by all, not just me?

[Radar-Love]

Really? That's strange. When I log in here and view the post above yours I can see three photos with text above them. Can you see the text? It's the first time I've tried posting photos. Any tips to get them to be seen by all' date=' not just me?[/quote']

 

 

I only see three picture placeholders -- no photos.

 

Just a guess, but, the reason why you see the pictures you uploaded and posted, and nobody else does, is because of some sort of file permissions problem.

 

 

[DeepEnd]

 

 

I only see three picture placeholders -- no photos.

 

Just a guess, but, the reason why you see the pictures you uploaded and posted, and nobody else does, is because of some sort of file permissions problem.

I can't see the pics either. I tried four different browsers: I.E., Opera, Chrome, and Sea Monkey (Firefox engine). I.E. and Chrome show placeholders, the other two don't even show those.

[Elias Graves]

I'm using a P90 bridge along with a firebird (vintage wind) neck pickup. Definitely my favorite combo. I can do nasty with the P90 and everything from a clean tele neck pickup sound to an all out wall of sound with the firebird and no mud from the neck position. Very versatile setup.

[Jazzer2020]

Hmmm... let me try this again...

It says I'm not authorized to create this post!

It also said that the other day when I tried to post the photos.

I'm not sure how to proceed...

Has anyone ever got that message before?