New Seymour Duncan SSL-1 vs body influence on tone change

[blademaster2]

My experience today might interest a few of you. I have an old guitar that I built myself more than 30 years ago using solid walnut (photos in the gallery, my third one) and back then I installed three Fender-style Strat-type pups in it when I built it. These pups are mounted in HB mounting rings and it looks like a HH guitar.

The bridge up is complex (basically using two single coils as a split coil humbucker) so it is hard to compare anything there and I am leaving it alone for now, but the neck pickup is just a Strat type under a chrome HB cover.

I have always felt that the neck pup was a little dull and lifeless, but when I built the guitar I was a student and had little cash, so I used a second-hand Fender pickup (from a cheap Fender solidbody, not a Strat). It never sounded like a Strat, but many people told me it was because of the low-quality pup. Recently I purchased a Seymour Duncan SSL-1 pickup (Alnico 5, built to sound as much as possible like a vintage Fender Strat pickup) and I swapped it in for the neck position today. Note that the SSL-1 pickups are *supposed* to sound like vintage Strat pups and are rated highly by many.

I love the tone I am getting now when playing on the neck pickup alone, bright and 'glassy', and it sounds punchy and full of life through my VOX amp. I am very pleased. 

However .... it also sounds warm and 'woody', with a distinct voice of its own. This lovely tone bears little resemblance to the sharper, more plastic attack of the tone I get from my Strat's neck pup through the same amp (which also has Alnico 5 pickups). The chief differences here are the body material and the plastic pickguard of the Strat versus the pickup ring-mount in my own walnut wood guitar. The only other differences besides the body and mounting would be the location of the neck pup, since my own guitar has 24 frets and therefore the neck position is around 5/8 inch further toward the bridge than on a 21-fret Strat, however that difference would make it *less* warm and more 'twangy' - not warmer - so I do not attribute anything of today's observations to that difference.

I regard today's experiment as an interesting comparison that somewhat reveals/confirms that the body and wood do play a role in a solidbody guitar's tone, in conjunction with the pickups and amplifier of course. I am not a 'tonewood' fanatic and I am not trying to spark another debate, but I also would *never* believe the claims of those who use 'science' of looking at an oscilloscope trace and expecting to detect or refute the nuances of guitar tone that I know I can hear.

To me, I am even more convinced now that pickups alone do not determine tone, and I love the complexities of our instruments that makes them all unique (and why I tell my wife that I need more guitars since they are all different).

Happy New Year!!

[Deleted]

Dec 27, 2017 14:59:08 GMT -5 blademaster2 said:

(which also has Alnico 5 pickups). The chief differences here are the body material and the plastic pickguard of the Strat versus the pickup ring-mount in my own walnut wood guitar.

wait a sec, so basically you say that you compare the duncan guitar with a strat which has a different pup ? Shouldn't the different pup alone be responsible for the change of sound? Look I am a strong believer of the material (wood/metal/etc...) playing huge role in sound, I am just asking you to clarify.

Dec 27, 2017 14:59:08 GMT -5 blademaster2 said:

I regard today's experiment as an interesting comparison that somewhat reveals/confirms that the body and wood do play a role in a solidbody guitar's tone

Of course. I got a Carvin, which can produce the shrillest artificial harmonics high E, 12-15 frets. I mean unplugged. I can hear them coming clearly and loud. No other guitar of mine does this. Guess what? The same happens when amplified. Can produce I said? arghhhhhh. This guitar is on the waiting list for a major operation. Cyn... yes, ooops I did it again.

Dec 27, 2017 14:59:08 GMT -5 blademaster2 said:

Happy New Year!!

Likewise! All the modding powers to you!

[blademaster2]

Thanks for your interest.

Yes, I know that the *exact* same pup was not compared across the two bodies (that is a lot more work than I am prepared to undertake for this experiment). I am making the assumption that, both being Alnico and highly regarded as good vintage-sounding Strat replacement pups, they would both at least sound 'stratty' if they were installed into a Strat. My experiment is admittedly a little less conclusive.

The fact that the pup sounds lovely but not 'stratty' in the walnut guitar gives me a pretty good idea that the body/mount is making the chief difference. JohnH posted an excellent comparison of ceramic versus alnico pups and showed that two different alnico ones were fairly close in frequency response, but there are audible subtleties that cannot be measured and I am willing to acknowledge the weakness in my experimental approach.

Either way, I am loving new new pup in my old axe.

[pj]

In your original post you mentioned a chrome cover? Have you used this on the duncan? If so it's very likely you will be experiencing some losses due to eddy currents in the cover.

Some years ago I ended up with a collection of very different strat pickups and tried to use them in a guitar together, trying to be practical and efficient in my use of resources. There was a duncan alnico 2, a dimarzio class of 55, and a dimarzio hs3 which I determined I'd use in the bridge as it had a hotter wind even on one coil. I could hardly Tell the difference between the neck and bridge and the middle was significantly brighter and louder which made the guitar quite unwieldy. I decided then that even when I thought I was working apples to apples I was really working green things to green things.

Have you built any guitars since? Happy new year.

[blademaster2]

PJ,

I did consider that, and I have yet to add a cover to this new one (awaiting delivery from StewMac). I have read posts saying that the eddy current effect is small or inaudible, but I am quite prepared to acknowledge the impact of eddy currents if I experience it with this. 

As a result of this uncertainty I will not pot the chrome cover for this new one when I try it, and if I detect that same loss of tone then I will instead purchase a plastic cover. It may well be the case here, since the original pup does not appear to be ceramic (poles *look* the same as alnico pups, but besides that the potting prevents me from saying anything else about them) and they measure similar dc resistance compared to the SSL-1.

This was my third guitar, and I still love playing it. It has very unique electronics for the bridge pup and the mixing circuitry, but I can still play only the neck pup straight through if I want to and that permitted this experiment. I have built two prior to that, all different and experimental in some way or another.

My first guitar taught me that the finish can indeed make a huge change on the tone - and I learned this the hard way. It initially had a thin, polyurethane finish that did not look professional and glossy but the guitar would resonate and regenerate feedback notes like no other solidbody I have tried since. Ignorant of the sound being influenced in any way by the wood or body, I had a friend refinish it with a thick coat of lacquer. Immediately I could sense that it was not as resonant, and in a concert where feedback was needed for one song it was totally non-responsive. I still like the guitar, but I regret what it could have been had I not done that to it.

I still want to build more guitars, but life/wife/kids, you know ......

[Deleted]

Jan 5, 2018 9:53:56 GMT -5 blademaster2 said:

PJ,

I still want to build more guitars, but life/wife/kids, you know ......

if our wives knew how much money we save by doing mods VS visiting psychiatrists, they would open an account at stewmac themselves.

[sumgai]

Jan 5, 2018 15:30:05 GMT -5 @pyrros said:

if our wives knew how much money we save by doing mods VS visiting psychiatrists, they would open an account at stewmac themselves.

Are you saying that we're all crazy here.... or perhaps Nutz?

[newey]

if our wives knew how much money we save by doing mods VS visiting psychiatrists, they would open an account at stewmac themselves.

I don't save that much. I just get my anti-psychotic meds from my family physician . . .

Besides, my wife doesn't know how much I spend, forget savings. She still hasn't spotted the extra guitar case that houses the Fender Duo-Sonic I bought a year ago. So, now, it's been long enough that I can probably sell the "I've had that forever . . " story.

I can be a sneaky S.O.B. when an offset-bodied short-scale Fender is at issue.