Seymour Duncan Black Winter Specs

[antigua]

A friend of mine bought some of these pickups, and had put them into a guitar, so I didn't remove them but I went into the back and measured these values:

Seymour Duncan Black Winter 

Bridge:
 R: 16.6k ohms
 L: 6.891H
 Q @1khz: 2.02
 C: 145.56pF (with stock lead wire)

Neck:
R: 13.0k ohms

L: 5.651H
Q @1khz: 2.18
C: 113.43pF (with stock lead wire)
 

Gauss: 900G

In a way these are a lot Super Distortions guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/7737/dimarzio-super-distortion-analysis-review , similar inductances and both have ceramic magnets, but this set has a similar neck companion, where as the Super Distortion was paired with the PAF-ish "PAF-Pro". But what's really remarkable about these is that they read 900 gauss at the tops of the screws and pole pieces, nearly double a Super Distortion. I'm not real familiar with various ceramic magnets types, but I know that the Super Distortion's is a single bar, and looks a lot like the type you'd see on a refrigerator.  The Black Winters claim to have three ceramic magnets, (the thin type that would replace an AlNiCo bar) stacked together, and it appears that the three of those ceramic magnets are a lot more power than the one large ceramic magnet in the Super Distortion. 

My impression of the sound is that the output is loud, sensitive and the EQ profile is somewhat harsh on the ears, at least in a clean context, I think on account of the really strong magnetic pull, and a resonant peak that must sit around 2 to 2.5 kHz. Touching a screwdriver to the tops of the slugs feels about the same as if they were AlNiCo pole pieces. These pickups are marketed at metal players.

[frets]

Antigua,
I have a set of these in an Ibanez RGA. I can attest to their sonic output. They are one of my favorite sets of pickups. I use the guitar to play punk; in particular, The Ramones.

[antigua]

I have to admit I was surprised. Seymour Duncan has a long history of repurposing the paf footprint without doing anything too special, so to see that they had stacked three ceramic magnets to get full pieces that are nearly as strong as the old Stag Mag, was a nice surprise. I didn't give Seymour Duncan enough credit for innovating, even if it was just stacking a few magnets together.

Speaking of which, there's probably no other pickup in the Seymour Duncan catalog that gets less mention than the Stag Mag. I'm curious about them but it seems that absolutely nobody else is.

[gpdb]

Do you have any images of how the magnets are laid out in the pickup? I'm really interested in understanding how multi-magnet pickups are put together. 

[blademaster2]

I am glad you looked at these, thanks for the data. I asked this forum if anyone knew anything about these pickups three years ago but no one showed interest at the time.

I have a friend who plays professionally in a speed metal band and only installs SD Black Winter pups for all of his guitars, so I bought a pair based on his recommendation. While they do metal very well, their split coil tone is very clean and bright and in some ways it seemed to be a disservice to these pickups to limit their marketing to metal players.

I also have a guitar with Dimarzio Super Distortion pups (actually, Dual Sound) and they, too, sound great playing clean in either setting but the Black Winter pups are possibly better for metal.

Will you be producing any frequency response plots for these? I would be very interested to see them.

[antigua]

My friend was in from out of town and I only had about a half hour to look at the guitar. I brought an LCR meter in a soldering iron with me to where I met him, so I didn't have time to take the pickups out and take them apart. I see a few listings on reverb that show the back of the pickup, and it looks like an ordinary PAF. The claim that there are three stacked ceramics is from Seymour Duncan. Based on the fact that and I would assume that they are arranged like a super distortion, with an extra amount of clearance under the bobbins for a taller magnet, or a stack of magnets, as the case may be.