PU placement

[simes]

According to Melvyn Hiscock, PU's are generally placed to coincide with natural harmonics. Thus, the neck PU on a Tele coincides with the spot where the 24th fret would be, and the bass side of the bridge PU with the first natural harmonic starting at the bridge end.

Apart from anything else, this would seem to be an argument for not slanting the bridge PU, but I digress ...

On a 2HB guitar like a LP, I notice that the neck PU is placed so that the neck-side coil is at the 24th fret position, whereas the bridge PU would appear to be placed so that the corresponding harmonic coincides with the midpoint between the two coils.

This, presumably, would mean that splitting the neck HB on an LP should give a more convincingly Fenderish SC sound than splitting the bridge PU. Following this logic, too, the bridge PU might benefit from local parallel switching rather than splitting.

Hum cancelling issues aside, could I be on to something here?

[newey]

Simes-

According to Melvyn Hiscock, PU's are generally placed to coincide with natural harmonics. Thus, the neck PU on a Tele coincides with the spot where the 24th fret would be, and the bass side of the bridge PU with the first natural harmonic starting at the bridge end.

This is true, but don't read too much into this. I doubt Leo had any such thing in mind when he designed the original Tele/Broadcaster.

I know that, on the Strat, the pickups were placed just based on what looked good, evenly spaced, without any thought to harmonics.

I suspect that Leo was just copying the neck pickup location used in the Jazz Boxes of the day, since he hoped to sell his solid-bodies guitars to Jazz players originally. And the bridge location was probably just fortuitous as well.

Now, of course, someone building a Jazz guitar may have originally put the neck pickup at the 24th fret position based on harmonics, but more likely, that was just where it "sounded good".

And putting pickups at locations off of a natural harmonic, as well as slanting them, can give tones pleasing to the ears of some.

As far as your theory of the coils being split at the neck versus at the bridge, as we move bridgeward, towards one end of the string anchorage, smaller differences in pickup positioning have larger effects. You will often read herein (because it's true) that splitting a bridge pickup so that either single coil is operable is worthwhile to do, since even the small difference in the position of the N versus the S coil makes a tonal difference at the bridge. Not so at the neck; whether one splits the N or S at the neck, either one will sound the same because of the larger string excursion towards the middle of the string.

Whether spitting the neck HB makes it sound more like a Strat neck SC than splitting the bridge makes it sound like a Strat bridge SC, I don't know. The difference in the sound of a neck pickup as opposed to the bridge is such an overriding difference that I don't see how you could tell if one was "Strattier" than the other.

Also realize that the magnetic field of a coil doesn't extend laser-like up from the center of the coil. There is a good deal of "slop" in the magnetic field, meaning that pickup siting is not required to be very precise to get a good sound.

A split coil from a HB isn't going to sound like a SC pickup no matter where the coil is located, either. Not to say it's not a good sound to have, it is. But it's different than a pure SC. The difference in the respective coils is the main determinant there, not which one of the 2 HB coils you choose to split off.

[ashcatlt]

I was going to write this big thing here, but then I remembered we happen to have a Reference Article on the subject.

Anyway, the 24th fret is 2 octaves above the open string. Depending on how you decide to count harmonics, this is either the 3rd or 4th harmonic.

It's important to note that this is a null point for this harmonic and of all octaves thereof (8th, 16th, etc...). These harmonics will be severely attenuated at the neck postion.

I'd also like to mention that this is only true when you're playing the open string. Fretting "moves" the whole harmonic series. This has a bigger (or quicker) impact on the sounding of the higher harmonics than the lower.

Near the bridge, the maximum velocity (or volume) of the various harmonics are closer together. Because of this, smaller changes to the relative velocity of one harmonic versus that of another are more easily noticed. Of course, that's what newey said.

[simes]

Damn, all that painful mental effort for nothing ...

[sumgai]

Feb 6, 2010 3:27:52 GMT -5 simes said:

Damn, all that painful mental effort for nothing ...

Yes, but it was harder for me to keep the pebble in my hand, grasshopper!

;D



sumgai

[simes]

Perhaps this is the reason for the preference I've heard expressed several times for splitting a neck HB and S/P-ing a bridge HB. Harmonics aside (yes, I'd completely disregarded the effect of fretting a note and therefore moving the harmonics' position), this would presumably approximate more closely the physical position along the string of Strat/Tele bridge and neck PU's, therefore doing a slightly better job of replicating the sounds the mod is intended to imitate.