Calling Antigua: boutique 3+3 split-coil strat pickups

[foxmilder]

Hello all,

Having spent the past few years silently following the development of your empirical pickup-testing research program, I've happened upon a set of boutique (which I gather is pickup-guru shorthand for "comically overpriced") noiseless Strat pickups worth showing you before the Reverb listing expires. 

Here is the listing in question. It appears to be a variation on the old P-bass/Electric XII/MFD split-coil design. Unlike the dismal Fender split-coil design assessed by antigua here, the manufacturer has wisely opted to retain the offset "Z-coil" shape preferred by Leo Fender, which ought to be sufficiently protective against the volume drop-outs sometimes observed when bending strings across the magnetic "seam" in less sophisticated split-coil designs.

Unfortunately, the price of the loaded pickguard is so utterly absurd — and its potential resale value so difficult to estimate — that I doubt it will ever be worth acquiring for the benefit of science. Nevertheless, I'm intrigued by the design, and by the switching possibilities it creates. The wiring scheme described in the listing is disappointingly tame. If these pickups work the way I think they do, the optimal switching configuration, IMO, would involve the use of two adjacent 5-way switches: one for the EAD strings, and another for the GBE strings.

But I have little expertise in the area of electronics, so I'm very curious to see what the forum's resident pickup scientists make of the design. Specifically, I'm wondering:

1. How satisfactorily do we suppose this design might approximate the sound of a traditional single-coil pickup?

2. How sonically desirable and/or easily operable do we think it would be, in practice, to have the option of selecting widely-spaced "half and half" pairs of coils in series, such that the bass and treble strings can each be separately assigned to any of the standard Stratocaster switch positions?

[foxmilder]

Incidentally, I should add: unlike the vast majority of boutique pickup merchants, the manufacturer responsible for this one-off set — "Stonewall Pickups" — offers a range of interesting, creative pickup designs. These pickups are far more interesting, to my mind, than the endless stream of PAF clones, "aged" magnets, "scatterwound" coils, etc. Personally, I find it easier to forgive high prices when the product offered represents a sincere attempt at creating something new.

I highly recommend browsing their online store.

[newey]

I'm on a dodgy internet connection at the moment and can't get a picture to load, but do a search for a Fender Electric XII. This type of pickup is not a new idea, although I have no idea how these boutique pickups compare to the originals. But I'm sure you can find more info about the Fender ones with a search.

[cynical1]

Man, I stopped reading once I saw $685.00 US for this. For that price, it needs to sing like an angel...and pickup pizza on the way back from making your alimony payments...

HTC1

[JohnH]

Interesting design! Im looking at it online from down here in Oz, where prices are translated into $ AUD.

So I'm seeing an opportunity to acquire this pick guard for just $1,030.92AUD + $112.87AUD Shipping! (and imagine that feeling, where having lived in the US, I think we feel our dollars about the same as you do yours!)

But still interesting to think about - just speculatively. There's not a lot in the specs that Ive seen, just some Ohm values. It looks like the two halves of each PU are designed to work in series, and if so, the neck pair is 7.1k and the bridge is 13k. We know that such Ohm values dont definitively tell us much, but even so, they seem to me like they may be fairly hot pickups, particularly the bridge. So maybe not so sparkly as many classic simple singles though the neck might be a bit like a hottish Texas Special?

The splitting within one pair will add some changes to phase cancellations on chords. if it was possible to A/B identical/equivalent split or not split pickups (and its not), I think we'd hear a slight difference, but not to the extent that it would be a huge deal-changer.

Mixing N and B parts could sound great and Id expect it to be within the tonal family of other mixes on N and B (singles or humbucker coils), which I'm an enthusiast of.

The humcancelling opportunities of these split pickups seem like the best feature to me, and it should work well within one pair but only partly across mixed pairs due to the unbalanced windings.

[kitwn]

Foxmilder,

I like your definition of 'boutique'. When all is said and done, a pickup is just a magnet with some wire wrapped round it.

John H,

I didn't realise you were so close! I'm in the northern end of Tasmania.

I agree with you about the potential for putting the two coils in a humbucking configuration, I think that was the whole point of this design in the first place, a humbucking variant of the single coil pickup. Possibly designed primarily to get round another manufacturer's existing patent. Whether there is any musical merit in the increased range of wiring possibilities created by the separate coils for bass and treble strings is open to experiment.

Kit

[antigua]

I did make a dual selector Strat with split pickups, guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/8810/bipolar-pickup-details  







I used "Bipolar pickups" by S&S Winding  www.facebook.com/BiPolarPickups/ , the prices were fine. They tried to push a loaded pick guard that enforced split combinations so that you'd never get cancellations in between G and D poles, and it gave you a unique sound, but I really wanted the whole bag of tricks, so I set it up with two switches like you see. The really cool thing is that I was able to have a global tone control as well as a tone control for just the EAD strings, which offers even more possibilities of sounds. 

The end result is not as shocking as you'd expect. It comes across more like an EQ control, changing the overall balance of bass or treble depending on where you set the switches. That's an upside of a traditional setup, having all neck, bridge or middle, because when you blend them, the harmonic distinctiveness of a given position gets washed out. I think you'd get a bigger sonic effect if you sent the outputs of the two sides to different guitar amps and had a stereo effect. Playing a solo with split sounds is interesting, you can get the sound of one pickup while riffing on the EAD and the sound of another when you switch to the GBE, and get different voicings as if you were switching the pickups selector in the middle of the guitar solo. At the end of the day I think you'd gravitate towards a traditional control set up for ease of use, that's how it always seems to play out.  

As far as how the G&L-like split pickups would sound, if you watch a good demo of a Comanche, like this one is right to the point:



you can see how it will sound. I'd say that it mostly sound like a Strat with the sound of the middle pickup mixed into the whole sound. If you are the sort of person who doesn't like the middle pickup of a Strat, you might hate hearing that timbre sprinkled all over the guitar, but if you like the Jaguar and Jazz Master sound, it brings more of that middle area tone to the bridge and neck pickups. Personally, as time goes on I just want a Strat to sound like a Strat and if I want a guitar that sounds like something else, I just pick up something else. I guess I want my eyes and ears to be in agreement. If the goal is noise cancellation, I think the EMG active sets for Strats is the only way to get real Strat sound with zero noise and no compromise to the tone. Pickups like DiMarzio Areas have a good reputation but IMO, it's a "best among the worst" situation.

[foxmilder]

antigua: In my years of experimenting, the best noiseless strat sounds I have gotten have been from active pickups — I particularly liked a cheap Seymour Duncan "Livewire Classic" (the first edition, with covered poles — an EMG clone, as far as I can tell) I picked up, but later lost (I think...) while moving house. The only passive noiseless strat pickups I own are a Zexcoil set — the kind with the the solid cover. Those are fairly good — if anything, they can be a bit too "stratty". I don't have the equipment to test this, but the attack transients feel even more "peaky" than regular strat single coils. Even with 250kΩ pots, they are a bit too sharp with all knobs at "10" — they remind me of the Jazzmaster/Jaguar in that regard.

Since I bought that set, Scott Lawing has brought out these new "Tru-Gauge" pickups, on the grounds that the earlier lower-output models — the ones I have — had a higher Q-factor than conventional single coils. I'm not sure what to make of that. It matches my subjective impression of his pickups, but I'm not sure how a non-magnetic pole piece could achieve the stated values, given what we've learned about the effects of slugs vs rod magnets.

JohnH: I'm also Australian, so I'm seeing the same utterly obscene prices you are! I was about 18 years old, I think, way back when we briefly achieved parity with the US dollar — and with no GST on online purchases under $1,000, too! God, those were the days. I wish I'd bought everything I ever looked at on eBay back then.

Regarding this set, I also found the DCR values a little strange. Might we suppose that the maker of these pickups — likely an adherent of the boutique "hand-wound" gospel — might have struggled to get enough turns of 42 AWG onto whatever improvised 3-string bobbins were presumably used?

[cynical1]

Feb 11, 2023 20:07:58 GMT -5 antigua said:

G&L-like split pickups...of a Comanche

These are going for around $80.00\e new on Reverb. That leaves you $400.00 to grab a pickguard and electronics versus the Stonewalls...

HTC1

[gckelloch]

Feb 12, 2023 5:39:11 GMT -5 foxmilder said:

Since I bought that set, Scott Lawing has brought out these new "Tru-Gauge" pickups, on the grounds that the earlier lower-output models — the ones I have — had a higher Q-factor than conventional single coils. I'm not sure what to make of that. It matches my subjective impression of his pickups, but I'm not sure how a non-magnetic pole piece could achieve the stated values, given what we've learned about the effects of slugs vs rod magnets.

He has made many different models with various Q-factors. You sure the ones you have are lower output than the Tru-Guage line? AFAIK, the TG line has 42AWG wire, and at least some of the older ones have 41AWG. That right there should decrease the Q-factor slightly. There may be some difference in efficiency from standard SC pickups in that the strings vibrate on diagonal access to each coil. The total coil wire traversed for each vibration might be 2x as much. That might increase sensitivity, but I assume the diagonal orientation reduces efficiency. More coil wire for a given vibration might be why the attack is stronger? Scott achieves Q-factor for a given wire gauge with various pole alloys that have different properties than the typical Steel screws or slugs in PAF style pickups. They are all magnetic and powered by a small Nd magnet underneath.

[foxmilder]

Feb 12, 2023 14:06:11 GMT -5 gckelloch said:

Feb 12, 2023 5:39:11 GMT -5 foxmilder said:

He has made many different models with various Q-factors. You sure the ones you have are lower output than the Tru-Guage line? AFAIK, the TG line has 42AWG wire, and at least some of the older ones have 41AWG. That right there should decrease the Q-factor slightly. There may be some difference in efficiency from standard SC pickups in that the strings vibrate on diagonal access to each coil. The total coil wire traversed for each vibration might be 2x as much. That might increase sensitivity, but I assume the diagonal orientation reduces efficiency. More coil wire for a given vibration might be why the attack is stronger? Scott achieves Q-factor for a given wire gauge with various pole alloys that have different properties than the typical Steel screws or slugs in PAF style pickups. They are all magnetic and powered by a small Nd magnet underneath.

I meant to refer to "the earlier lower-output models" rather than "the earlier, lower-output models", if that makes sense. I have the Z-Core 5 "vintage staggered" set, made up of the following pickups (from bridge to neck):

ZVH5 — "Vintage Hot" (3.3 H)
ZVN5 — "Vintage" (2.7 H)
ZVU5 — "Vintage Underwound" (2.3 H)

The ZVU5 and ZVN5, although still available, are the pickups that the newly-refined "Tru-Gauge" models are closest to. According to Dr Lawing's blog, the Q-factor values of the ZVU5 (~2.9) and ZVN5 (~2.7) are too high, whereas the new ZV55 and ZV63 models (both around 2.5) are closer in that respect to conventional Fender pickups.

I didn't mean to suggest that my older pickups are lower in output; it was just poorly phrased. All I meant to say was that his most recent lower-output offerings differ from mine with regard to Q-factor values. The ZVU5 pickup in my set is apparently "mostly 40.5" AWG (!), whereas its Tru-Gauge equivalent (the ZV55) uses the more conventional 42 AWG. The ZV55 also uses a modified pole piece material, deliberately increasing eddy current effects in order to better target the desired Q-factor.

[foxmilder]

gckelloch I don't understand the pole piece material effects, but I'm familiar with the basic construction of the pickups. Two of the magnets came out of the middle pickup while I had it in a box with various other parts, and I was surprised by how powerful they were — I had to exert great physical effort to get them back into their little grooves!

[foxmilder]

One more observation I should add: when I first installed them, being somewhat skeptical of noiseless pickups, I used some 500k pots I had laying around. The result was entirely unusable — even the neck pickup was painfully bright, producing the kind of "icepick" sound I associate with the bridge pickup of a Strat wired in the traditional manner.

Although the pole piece mechanics are well beyond my understanding, the stated Q-values accord with my subjective impression that these are bright, sharp-sounding pickups. It really does seem that these pickups are superior to other passive noiseless pickups when it comes to mimicking the Q-factor values of Alnico 5 single coils.

[gckelloch]

Feb 13, 2023 4:23:40 GMT -5 foxmilder said:

gckelloch I don't understand the pole piece material effects, but I'm familiar with the basic construction of the pickups. Two of the magnets came out of the middle pickup while I had it in a box with various other parts, and I was surprised by how powerful they were — I had to exert great physical effort to get them back into their little grooves!

Hope you got the magnetic poles orientated right so the pickups are noiseless. Nd magnets are very strong indeed. That may be partially why the pickups sound so sharp, although AlNiCo V pickups in the 2.5H range would sound pretty sharp with 500k pots as well. You might try 10-12' of the low C Sommer XLL cable I recommended in another post:
guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/9233/audio-quality?page=1&scrollTo=107837

That will smooth out and raise the peak freq. Lowering the pickups a bit can help, too. Decreased string pull tends to produce a smoother sound.

40.5AWG for your Z-Cores is even thicker than I thought. AFAIK, thinner wire has more consistent impedance. That lowers the Q-factor, and can also increase the lower harmonic strength depending on how much of it is within the magnetic field from the string.

The Q-factor also has to do with how the poles create eddy-currents. It might be from how the grain structure of the alloy affects the magnetic field, but I don't know. Beyond me as well.

[antigua]

You can control the Q factor with the tone pot. If you put in a 1 meg pot, that gives you the most range of high to low Q. If the Zexcoil has neos in the cores, then the Q factor will be supremely high by their nature unless the maker soldered in a resistor, to knock the Q factor down within the pickup's housing. If the Zexcoils sound sharp in a was that the tone control can't resolve, I'd suspect maybe it's something else, like a low inductance paired with the strong neo magnets, opening up a lot of treble aside from Q factor. If you have a strong magnet, it causes asymmetry in how the guitar string moves, causing an increase in harmonic amplitudes over the pickup that is causing the pull. That's why A5 poles sound so sharp, compared to anything else. 

[gckelloch]

Hmmm...I thought Nd lowered the Q? Maybe ole' Willi Stich (RIP) had said Nd lowered the inductance when combined with the pole alloy in his Micro-Coils. Hard to remember old phone conversations. I know he said it lowered some parameter. In any case, the Nd magnets in the Z-Core series are on the bottom of the poles far below the coils. I assume the pole alloy combined with the relatively low wind count produces the slightly high Q-factor, but how much difference would 2.7 or 2.9 make compared to 2.5 anyway? One notch or so on the tone knob?

I also assume the field strength is largely responsible for the sharpness. Perhaps a Cu-coated Steel plate on the bottom would draw some of the flux away from the strings, assuming the opposing magnet polarities allow to attach a Steel plate?
www.alegree.co.uk/collections/stratocaster-pickup-building-supplies/products/stratocaster-single-coil-baseplate

You'd be surprised how much difference a Low C cable can make if it shifts (and reduces the level of) the peak above the 3-3.5kHz range.

[foxmilder]

I realise now that I omitted some important background information regarding the context in which I’ve been using these pickups:

1. I don’t play live, or with other people. I record music on my own, playing and/or sequencing everything myself in Ableton Live

2. I don’t play through an amplifier. Instead, my guitar cable goes into an active DI box, the output of which goes into the mic preamp on my interface.

My DI box is a Rupert Neve RNDI, a phantom-powered active unit with a discrete FET input (2.2 MΩ) and transformer-balanced output (less than 40 Ω). I use only a short instrument cable before the DI.

My audio interface is an Audient iD4. It’s a simple, inexpensive interface, but the mix preamp is of surprisingly high quality for the price range — its supposedly identical to the preamps on Audient’s consoles.

As I understand it, this signal chain ought to be sufficient to prevent any significant resonant loading of a passive guitar pickup. Is that correct?l

[gckelloch]

Depends on the C rating of your guitar cable and how long it is. There's also how much internal C the pickups have, and if the input on the Neve unit has any C. 2.2M is higher impedance than usual, so that would increase the pickup resonance as well. You could ask Scott Lawing if it's possible to attach a Steel plate to his pickups, and if it would reduce string pull.

[foxmilder]

Feb 19, 2023 14:52:52 GMT -5 gckelloch said:

Depends on the C rating of your guitar cable and how long it is. There's also how much internal C the pickups have, and if the input on the Neve unit has any C. 2.2M is higher impedance than usual, so that would increase the pickup resonance as well.

gckelloch: I never got around to replying to this, but I meant to ask you: do you happen to know how I could calculate the frequency response of a passive guitar pickup when it is plugged into my particular DI box?

I have tried to use this frequency response calculator, but I can't get it to work properly with the version of Excel I have on my (Apple) computer — and I don't know how to use Excel to begin with!

I play guitar *exclusively* through this DI box, and I would like to be able to make use of antigua's database when purchasing pickups in the future. With novel noise-cancelling pickups like the Zexcoils, for example, I'd be interested to know — even if it's just a rough estimate — what happens to the Q and resonant frequency when plugged into the 2.2MΩ RNDI instrument input.

I'd be really grateful if anybody could point me in the right direction, because my understanding of the science is not yet robust enough to work out what I ought to be looking for.

[antigua]

Apr 26, 2023 2:28:48 GMT -5 foxmilder said:

Feb 19, 2023 14:52:52 GMT -5 gckelloch said:

Depends on the C rating of your guitar cable and how long it is. There's also how much internal C the pickups have, and if the input on the Neve unit has any C. 2.2M is higher impedance than usual, so that would increase the pickup resonance as well.

gckelloch: I never got around to replying to this, but I meant to ask you: do you happen to know how I could calculate the frequency response of a passive guitar pickup when it is plugged into my particular DI box?

I have tried to use this frequency response calculator, but I can't get it to work properly with the version of Excel I have on my (Apple) computer — and I don't know how to use Excel to begin with!

I play guitar *exclusively* through this DI box, and I would like to be able to make use of antigua's database when purchasing pickups in the future. With novel noise-cancelling pickups like the Zexcoils, for example, I'd be interested to know — even if it's just a rough estimate — what happens to the Q and resonant frequency when plugged into the 2.2MΩ RNDI instrument input.

I'd be really grateful if anybody could point me in the right direction, because my understanding of the science is not yet robust enough to work out what I ought to be looking for.

The easiest thing to do is probably use the inductance as a baseline, so if you have a pickup you like or don't like, then figure out what its inductance is and then get a new pickup with more or less inductance. If the pickup seems just a little too congested sounding, try using a low C cable, or just buy a wire less unit, like Line 6 Relay, and you will very low overall capacitance. When you shed the cable capacitance, lots of pickups will end up having a resonant peak that is over 4kHz, and that's good for recording, because then you can shape the tone a lot with an EQ or software amp modeler.

If the DI is 2.2 meg ohms, the Q factor will be about as high as it can possibly be, and it might sound annoying with quality headphones on, but the guitar's tone knob should be able to fix that. 

I'd mostly just avoid very high inductance pickups like the JB, Little '59, etc. I don't like recording because it's so stressful, but I find it's least stressful when I used the most generic off-the-shelf gear possible. 

[gckelloch]

Apr 26, 2023 2:28:48 GMT -5 foxmilder said:

Feb 19, 2023 14:52:52 GMT -5 gckelloch said:

Depends on the C rating of your guitar cable and how long it is. There's also how much internal C the pickups have, and if the input on the Neve unit has any C. 2.2M is higher impedance than usual, so that would increase the pickup resonance as well.

gckelloch: I never got around to replying to this, but I meant to ask you: do you happen to know how I could calculate the frequency response of a passive guitar pickup when it is plugged into my particular DI box?

I have tried to use this frequency response calculator, but I can't get it to work properly with the version of Excel I have on my (Apple) computer — and I don't know how to use Excel to begin with!

I play guitar *exclusively* through this DI box, and I would like to be able to make use of antigua's database when purchasing pickups in the future. With novel noise-cancelling pickups like the Zexcoils, for example, I'd be interested to know — even if it's just a rough estimate — what happens to the Q and resonant frequency when plugged into the 2.2MΩ RNDI instrument input.

I'd be really grateful if anybody could point me in the right direction, because my understanding of the science is not yet robust enough to work out what I ought to be looking for.

Well, I have an old 3.6H Wilde L280SL in the bridge of my Parker Nitefly. It's not harsh at all with my low C cable, but it probably has a lower Q and weaker flux than the ZVH5. I'd honestly try attaching some thin Zinc or Cu plated Steel to the bottom of your Zexcoils. That might weaken the flux at the top enough so it will be less harsh with a low C cable I recommended with the tone knob backed off a bit.

I don't know how accurate this is, but I just run white noise on my cell phone through an earbud and hold it on top of pickups to see the peak with a given load through something like Voxengo Span. It seems to work pretty well.

[gckelloch]

I don't really know if a steel plate on the bottom will weaken the flux at the top or not. Maybe it just lowers the Q of an AlNiCo pickup, but I can't say. An easier and free solution would be to place a free plugin b4 your amp sim software that softens the attack but doesn't create the transient spikes of amplitude compression due to the level coming back up b4 the next transient. I'm really liking the free Analog Obsession PreBox plugin right now. It has 11 preamp models and some handy filtering options. I prefer the New-81 (Neve 1081) model, but it's all personal preference. Click the insignia to red to engage 4x OS.

I also like the free AirWindows Pressure 5 compressor plugin. It has several parameters to shape the transients and signal recovery, including a "PawClaw" feature that adjusts transients independent of signal recovery. It doesn't seem to exhibit the transient spikes of typical compressors.

update 4/30/23: I did a simple test with some extra bar magnets and a Fender style Steel bridge. There is no noticeable loss of pull on a screwdriver at the top of the bars no matter how I attach the Steel bridge at the bottom. Although the sonic effect of a Steel plate on AlNiCo pole pickups is obvious, my guess is a Steel plate will have no significant effect on the sound of the Zexcoils due to the very highly permeable pole blades.

[foxmilder]

Funnily enough, I already use and love the exact Analog Obsession plugin you mention. I haven’t got the Zexcoils in a guitar at the moment, in any case. I’m currently trying out the various Donlis strat offerings, as I felt like using true single coils for a while.

Currently, I have the cheaper DS51 set installed — which Antigua found to be very bright. Next in line is their take on the Duncan-style 5/2 Alnico mix.

I’m more curious about how to calculate the actual numbers for resonant frequency and peak height, so that I can create EQ presets mimicking the effects of different input impedances, etc.

[foxmilder]

Apr 29, 2023 1:03:33 GMT -5 gckelloch said:

I'm really liking the free Analog Obsession PreBox plugin right now. It has 11 preamp models and some handy filtering options. I prefer the New-81 (Neve 1081) model, but it's all personal preference.

I have more specialised plugins for taming transients, so I use preamp emulations for saturation more than dynamics.

If you particularly like the 1081 emulation, you’d probably appreciate some of the more complex emulations of early Neve desks. Analog Obsession actually has a few: BritPre, ChanNev, and a few Neve EQ and compressor plugins.

But the best Neve plugins I have are paid: Black Rooster Audio’s minimalist emulation of the 1073 preamp, and the Lindell 80 channel strip. The latter, in particular, is perfect for lending a vaguely analogue character to otherwise very clean DI guitar lines.

[helpingfriendly]

Feb 10, 2023 4:27:29 GMT -5 foxmilder said:

Hello all,

Having spent the past few years silently following the development of your empirical pickup-testing research program, I've happened upon a set of boutique (which I gather is pickup-guru shorthand for "comically overpriced") noiseless Strat pickups worth showing you before the Reverb listing expires. 

Here is the listing in question. It appears to be a variation on the old P-bass/Electric XII/MFD split-coil design. Unlike the dismal Fender split-coil design assessed by antigua here, the manufacturer has wisely opted to retain the offset "Z-coil" shape preferred by Leo Fender, which ought to be sufficiently protective against the volume drop-outs sometimes observed when bending strings across the magnetic "seam" in less sophisticated split-coil designs.

Unfortunately, the price of the loaded pickguard is so utterly absurd — and its potential resale value so difficult to estimate — that I doubt it will ever be worth acquiring for the benefit of science. Nevertheless, I'm intrigued by the design, and by the switching possibilities it creates. The wiring scheme described in the listing is disappointingly tame. If these pickups work the way I think they do, the optimal switching configuration, IMO, would involve the use of two adjacent 5-way switches: one for the EAD strings, and another for the GBE strings.

But I have little expertise in the area of electronics, so I'm very curious to see what the forum's resident pickup scientists make of the design. Specifically, I'm wondering:

1. How satisfactorily do we suppose this design might approximate the sound of a traditional single-coil pickup?

2. How sonically desirable and/or easily operable do we think it would be, in practice, to have the option of selecting widely-spaced "half and half" pairs of coils in series, such that the bass and treble strings can each be separately assigned to any of the standard Stratocaster switch positions?

That looks really awesome man I gotta say!