Post by antigua on May 8, 2022 23:06:16 GMT -5
These are the pickups that came with this guitar www.aliexpress.com/item/3256801356693617.html , a Chinese made guitar sold for dirt cheap on AliExpress, costing about $325. A guitar at this price point is far from high quality, but with a little work, they make for a good looking toy guitar that you won't have to baby. Swapping out cheap pickups is easy, but if you're not comfortable doing fret work though, I wouldn't bother with these guitars.
These humbuckers show really aggressive eddy current attenuation, for three reasons, from most to least 1) high conductivity cover, 2) fake unthreaded screws that are as thick as the slugs, 3) an aluminum base plate. As can be seen in the picture below, the screws are actually slugs with a screw style head, which have been pressed into the bobbin. The aluminum base plate can't be soldered to directly, because solder doesn't readily adhere to aluminum, so there are copper eyelets in the center, where the solder joint is usually applied, and the solder is made to stick to the eyelets. The end result of the eddy currents are pickups that sound like they have the tone knob rolled down, but they have a lower inductance as compared to most PAF replicas, and a higher resonant peak, so they're not as lacking of high end as you might expect. They're not unlike hot Filter'trons.
They also feature a very large ceramic magnet, and I measured around 500 gauss, where as PAF replicas with AlNiCo tend to measure closer to 200 - 300 guass. The stronger magnetic pull also tends to bring out more treble.
Strangely the DC resistance is rather high, indicating that 43 or 44 AWG wire is used, which is surprising because finer magnet wire tends to be more expensive than thicker wire. Maybe the finer wire is cheaper in bulk, since less copper is ultimately used.
IMO it's worth replacing these pickups with something nicer, when nicer pickups can be had for as little as $40.
Chibson humbuckers, gold cover
Bridge
- DC Resistance: 11.418K ohms
- Q @1khz: 1.269
- Measured L: 4.381H
- Calculated C: 84.52pF (no hookup wire)
- Gauss: 500G (large ceramic)
Neck
- DC Resistance: 10.953K ohms
- Q @1khz: 1.227 (1.403 without cover)
- Measured L: 3.973H
- Calculated C: 84.50pF (nohookup wire)
- Gauss: 500G (large ceramic)
Bridge unloaded: dV:-4.9dB f: 7.63kHz (black)
Bridge loaded (200k & 470pF): dV:-2.6dB f: 3.28kHz (blue)
Neck unloaded: dV:-5.1dB f: 10.5kHz (black)
Neck loaded (200k & 470pF): dV:-2.9dB f: 3.28kHz (blue)
Neck no cover, unloaded: dV: 5.2dB f: 7.63kHz (red)
Neck no cover, loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 0.8dB f: 3.43kHz (green)
The "big dip" seen in this and Filter'tron style humbucker seems to due to the thicker pole pieces, thick screws in the case of a Filter'tron, and slug-sized pseudo screws in the case of these Chibson humbuckers. The conductive cover seems to cause a steady attenuation and no "dip". It means that the conductive cores and the conductive cover both interact with the circuit as a load, but in distinctive manners.
