Post by antigua on Sept 25, 2016 19:15:18 GMT -5
www.seymourduncan.com/pickup/vintage-staggered-strat
The history of the SSL-1 is well known, perhaps the first "vintage Strat single coil replacement" to hit the market in the late 70's. History is written by the victors, maybe some lesser known predecessor has long since been forgotten.
These pickups are kind of an oddity. Most of the pickups on the market with a 6.5K and higher DC resistance are said to be "hot", but I've never thought of these as sounding hot or "full". A bit harsh, maybe, unless I work the tone knob a bit.
This is supposed to be three of the same pickup with an RW/RP middle, so the variances are presumably unintentional. The pole pieces are fully charged ALNiCo 5.
SSL-1 Bridge
DC R: 6.54K
L: 2.633
Peak: 8.70 kHz
Calculated C: 107pF (127-20)
Coil width: 0.560"
SSL-1 Middle
DC R: 6.78K
L: 2.585
Peak: 8.76 kHz
Calculated C: 108pF (128-20)
Coil width: 0.565"
SSL-1 Neck
DC R: 6.61K
L: 2.637
Peak: 8.82 kHz
Calculated C: 103pF (123-20)
Coil width: 0.565"
The only other "vintage output" pickup I've gathered as much information on so far is the GFS Boston Blues www.strat-talk.com/threads/gfs-boston-blues-analysis-and-review.400927/#post-2424158 , and the frequency and inductance figures of the SSL-1 set puts it a lot closer to the Lollar Blackface set www.strat-talk.com/threads/lollar-vintage-blackface-analysis-and-review.401152/#post-2424146 . The lower resonant peak relative to the Blackfaces owes to a higher parasitic capacitance, as the inductance values are all within 150mH of each other. My suspicion is that their wind counts are very close, with the differences owing to the magnet wire, perhaps the insulation thickness is thinner with the SSL-1's wire, causing the higher capacitive coupling within the coil.
Frequency response bode plot, without load:
with load, 200K R and 470pF C across each pickup:
Setup details:
Bode plots are made with a Velleman PCSGU250 and the supplied probes in 10x mode, with the function generator feeding a driver coil of 0.48mH, placed on top of the pickup and driven with 2Vpp. The pickup is connected to an integrator circuit, designed by Ken Willmott kenwillmott.com/blog/, with a Velleman 10x probe, and fed back into the Velleman PCSGU250. I measured the probes' capacitance at 20pF, so that amount is subtracted from the capacitance calculation.
The inductance and Q measurements are made with an Extech 380193 in "SER" series mode, and the mean value between the 1kHz and 120Hz modes is recorded. The capacitance value is derived from the inductance and measured resonant peak.
Magnets are tested with a Spin Doctor ER gravitastech.weebly.com/spin-doctor-er.html