i wonder how you tweak the sound of pickups?

[mbengs1]

in making pickups, how do you boost mids, lows, highs of the pickup or tweak the eq? i know output is the number of windings, but how about EQ?

[Bucksstudent]

http://www.google.com

[Phil O'Keefe]

Magnet type and placement, wire gauge and number of wraps, type of wrapping (scatterwound, etc.) coil size... all kinds of things go into pickup design.

 

Here - maybe this will be a good introduction...

 

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support-pickups-101/digging-deeper

 

[Grant Harding]

Dip them in owl blood on s full moon. You'll then be able the adjust the tone with your mind (at night).

[garthman]

Volume and tone controls . . . . . . . ?

[Mikeo]

This is pretty much where science meets art.

 

You'd think after 40 years of companies like Duncan and DiMarzio tweaking out pick ups, there would nothing new to learn or manufacture, but I was listening to some clips of the new Tele TV Jones pick ups.

 

They sounded marvelous.

 

 

 

[Out of the Past]

http://www.lollarguitars.com/pdfs/TQRNov06.pdf

[Ratae Corieltauvorum]

Must try this

[Ratae Corieltauvorum]

That's the way I normally roll

[Ratae Corieltauvorum]

The only way to "tweak" the sound of an existing pickup is with the tone and volume controls, reversing the magnetism and phase, changing the height and on Strat and Tele pickups add a baseplate of numerous different materials, on humbuckers and P90s, swap thye magnets and adjust the heights of the pickups and adjust the individual screws. You can also experiment with wiring setups and cap values

[1001gear]

If they did research on 3D printed pickup coils, they could write/rewrite the book.

[Ratae Corieltauvorum]

What were you thinking of 1001?

[1001gear]

If they did research on 3D printed pickup coils' date=' they could write/rewrite the book.[/quote']

 

There's a week's worth of my posts missing so I'm just going filling in the blanks as I come upon them.

Anyway the logic here is printed coils - they'd actually be solid with coil-ical traces - would be more scientific and repeatable and would produce real data on pickup tone.

[gardo]

Some pickups have adjustable polepieces. You might get what you want by moving them very slightly, or you might mess up a good pickup. Proceed with caution and document everything.

[Rikv]

You can also change it's sound, attack, etc tru experimenting with placing a boss dynamic filter (or other similar fx) just behind your guitars output (with choosing minor tweaks before you end up in wah territory).

[Chris Loeffler]

Premiere Guitar's most recent issue has a great one-page article about why pickup specs should be provided and evaluated by players to understand what they're getting.

[Ratae Corieltauvorum]

By pickup specs....how specific are we talking?

[Chris Loeffler]

http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/24709-mod-garage-demystifying-pickup-parametersdcr

[h=1]Mod Garage: Demystifying DCR[/h] We all know pickups are the beating heart of our beloved electric guitars, but for many players—even those with strong opinions about tone—the specs used to describe these bundles of magnets and wires remain a mystery. This month we’ll start exploring the technical side of pickups, beginning with what appears to be the king of all pickup parameters: the DC resistance (DCR) value. Over the following months, we’ll investigate other parameters, too, so if you want a crash course in pickup-speak, stay tuned. To keep project-minded folks happy, I’ll intersperse these forays into pickup nerdism with classic mod columns, so don’t stash that soldering iron.

A typical pickup description—the kind you find everywhere on the internet—usually starts with endless speculation about how close a given pickup sounds to a vintage one, how it’s constructed, and how superior it is to all other pickups. All this is followed by a laundry list of specs. In an effort to cut through the marketing hype, it’s worth learning how to interpret individual pickup parameters to understand what they’re telling us about a particular model.

Personally, I think a complete and helpful technical pickup description should look like this:

Magnets: Staggered A5 alnico rod magnets with D and G strings raised

Magnet polarity: South (towards the strings)

Magnet wire: Plain enamel AWG 42

Winding direction: Top right, top going

Number of turns: 7,600

Resistance: DCR 6.5k ohm

Inductance: 2.9 H @120 Hz

Quality factor Q: 5.95

Resonant peak: 7.850 Hz

There are even more parameters—including magnet strength (measured in gauss), AC resistance (measured in k ohm), capacitance (measured in pF), output (measured in mV), and resonant frequency (measured in kHz)—but those listed above are the ones I consider important, so that’s what we’ll be exploring in this occasional series. The physics behind all this can be very complex. In the context of this column, however, we’ll keep things basic and player-friendly.

To get a sense of how builders describe their pickups, let’s look at five real-world examples:

• alnico 3 magnets for medium output: neck 6.4k, middle 6.5k, bridge 6.8k

• output: 6.5 DCR / magnet: alnico 5 / cables: plastic coated

• neck pickup: DCR 5.8k ohm / inductance 2.4H @ 1 kHz / heavy Formvar wire

• alnico 2 magnets / output mV: 125 / DCR: 6.15k / treble 9.0, mid 3.5, bass 3.5

• alnico 5 magnets / 42-gauge Formvar wire / 5.8k / middle RWRP

 

It’s worth learning how to interpret individual pickup parameters to understand what they’re telling us about a particular model.

 

 

One thing we can conclude from these disparate descriptions is that the DCR parameter seems to be the most important because it appears in each one. In fact, it’s hard to find a pickup description without it, even though how it’s presented is inconsistent.

You might find DCR mentioned this way: “With a DC resistance rating of 8.6 k ohm, [insert pickup model] is more powerful than most single-coils, and will give many humbuckers a run for their money.”

Ah, I see ... DCR must be the pickup parameter that represents volume, power, and output. Well, at least this is what such descriptions want you to believe, but is this true?

DCR stands for direct current resistance, and it’s very easy to measure (which is why I suspect it is always mentioned in pickup descriptions). All you need is a simple digital multimeter (DMM). Set it toohm and connect the two pickup leads to your DMM. If your DMM doesn’t have an auto-range function, set it to 20k ohm. Now you’ll get the DCR reading for your pickup (Photo 1).

Incidentally, the DCR reading is affected by such things as temperature, tension of the winding, tolerances regarding the number of turns, wire gauge, and measuring tolerances of your DMM, so the factory value of your pickup description will only be close to what you are reading at home. Don’t worry, it’s the nature of the beast and doesn’t mean your pickup is faulty.

Regardless of the hype, the DCR reading tells us absolutely nothing about a pickup’s tone. It’s also useless for gauging output, volume, or power—whatever you want to call it. If you think otherwise, here is a nice experiment: Measure the DCR of any given pickup, then remove the pickup’s magnet(s) and measure again. Guess what? You’ll get the same DCR reading as before, but the pickup’s output will be close to zero!

Here’s another reason to debunk the idea of equating a high DCR reading with increased output. In one of my personal Esquires, I have a pickup that’s loud as hell but has a DCR reading of 3.9 k ohm.

To summarize: A pickup’s DCR reading doesn’t tell us anything about its potential tone or its output. Increased output doesn’t come from more ohms, but rather more turns, which create more inductance.

 

So what does DCR tell us? It’s not completely useless: When you know the nominal factory DCR value, let’s say 7.5 k ohm, and your DMM shows “infinite” or “overload,” you know the pickup wire is broken. When you read something around 2-3 k ohm, your pickup likely has a short circuit in the winding. So it provides a basic reference point that can be very useful when troubleshooting a pickup.

The next pickup parameter we’ll discuss in a future column is polarity. But next month, I’ll pull the curtains back on the world of hidden or “stealth” pickups and show you what it takes to convert such antique technology to modern specs. Until then ... keep on modding!

 

[WRGKMC]

To answer the OP. As a general rule.

 

If the magnet strength remains the same - the frequency range narrows and gain increases as you add more winds. This results in having more pronounced mid peak (higher Q) less lows and highs and a stronger signal.

 

If you decrease winds, the gain/sensitivity decreases and the frequency range widens so you have more treble and bass, and less mids.

 

Manufacturers also tweak the magnet strength, wire size, bobbin types, winds etc to further tweak the sound. They can for example, increase the wire diameter while adding winds or only increase magnet strength to get a stronger output without loosing the frequency response. All this stuff comes down to how Inductors and transducers work.

 

Much of this involves the amplifiers impedance too. You have to take everything from the pickups to speaker into account when it comes to gain and frequency response.

 

High fidelity is low on the list when it comes to guitars so having an idea of what you actually want is important. Many pickup manufacturers overwind the crap out of their pickups and advertise their Hotness as being something you want and need.

 

If it was a sports car or a good looking woman I might agree, but pickups usually go down in tone quality as you add more winds. It reminds me of the loudness wars the recording studios have. People want their mixes ultra loud so the compress the crap out of them till there's no dynamics left.

 

The pickup becomes overly sensitive and compressed as the coil winds go up but at what cost? Limited frequency response? Monotone Dynamics? Inability to turn down get a clean signal without having major mud tones? Guitarists by these pickups then think they will sound good through some vintage amp designed for vintage wound pickups then wonder why their guitar sounds like a one trick pony.

 

They seemed to have gotten the balance right they invented the PAF and many of the other pickups out there. Nine times out of ten when stock pickups sound bad its because they are wound too hot for the amp and the amps tone stack is unable to expand the pickups response.

 

Other then pick attack sensitivity, going hotter then needed causes more problems then good. You can always add all the gain you can possibly need using various pedals and amps. What they cant do is give you back the frequency response if it was never there to begin with.

[jtr654]

This is the right answer.

[thrill74]

Size of wire, type of wire, how much wire on the bobbin, baseplate, magnet, field focus, stray eddy currents, screws, slugs, different heights, covers etc. Change any of those components and a new variation appears.

[Harry wilson]

http://www.lollarguitars.com/pdfs/TQRNov06.pdf look this one .