Seymour Duncan Seth Lover Set, Analysis and Review

[antigua]

www.seymourduncan.com/pickup/seth-lover-set




These humbuckers are not wax potted. As far as I can tell, it's essentially what you get if you were to buy an uncovered humbucker and then solder an aftermarket cover on top of it. As seen in pictures below, the pickup is extremely clean as a result, and features a maple spacer. The wire used for the coils has a dark red color.

My ultimate goal is to compares a few popular, mass produced "PAF" clones, and so far it's just this and the DiMarzio 36th Anniversary , and I can tell you now that the Seth Lover set is decidedly brighter and lower output than the 36th Anniversary set. The loaded peaks are about 300Hz higher across the board, and the inductance is 300mH lower in the neck, and 800mH lower in the bridge. There might also be physical aspects to the tonal product due to the lack of wax potting in the Seths. 


Seymour Duncan Seth Lover SH55B
Series resistance: 8.00k ohms
Series inductance: 4.835H

Gauss: 280 slug, screw 310G, AlNiCo 2 bar

Unloaded: V: 19.4dBV f: 6.07kHz (black)
Loaded (200k & 470pF): V: 17.6dBV f: 2.50kHz (red)


Seymour Duncan Seth Lover SH55N
Series resistance: 7.39k ohms
Series inductance: 4.158H

Gauss: 270 slug, screw 320G, AlNiCo 2 bar

Unloaded: V: 19.2dBV f: 6.29kHz (black)
Loaded (200k & 470pF): V: 17.7dBV f: 2.80kHz (red)

Baseline V: 16.7dB


Bode Plot

These plots are with the cover on:



Since the plots above are with the cover on, I measure the pickup with the cover on and off in order to see the extent of difference that it makes:


Unloaded, the cover causes a -3.2dBV drop at the resonance, and with a typical "real world" load, the drop is only 1dBV, right on the threshold of being audible. These results are near identical to those seen with the DiMarzio 36th Anniversary , suggesting that the covers are more or less the same.



Screw and Pole Piece Comparison

I transplanted the screws and pole from a Gibson '57 and put them into the Seth Lover SH55B in order to see if the swapping of those steel core materials show any difference:



There is no difference. To date, I have never noted an difference between steel poles or screws that were similar in dimension, but  I measure them anyway since there is a lot of talk out there about grades of steel and the difference they supposedly make. It looks like the Gibson's screws might be a hair less conductive than the Seth's, but it's all academic, as the difference is totally inaudible. 


Pictures



Covers removed... JACKPOT! a double cream Seymour Duncan! The neck is zebra, however. 





No wax. Not a drop. 






Info on how these tests are conducted guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/7723/measuring-electrical-properties-guitar-pickups

[JohnH]

There's an important observation we can make here, because Stratotarts has also tested a SH55N, a different example, on his own rig:

www.strat-talk.com/threads/seth-lover-sh-55n-quick-look.409415/

The testing method is the same, using his circuit design, different driver coil, different plotting software. The two pickups were 7.39k vs 7.30k, so similar.

The curves, once overlaid, are very close indeed - within about 1/2 db, and the peaks virtually the same. Its a good demonstration of the consistency of the tests when they can be repeated independently.

This is Antiguas results, traced as two dashed curves, scaled as near as I could to match frequency and db scales and then overlaid on stratotarts results: 

[antigua]

Cool, thanks a lot for comparing them.

[reTrEaD]

Always read the fine print.

My first impression when seeing the bode plot with the cover on, was that the Seth Lovers have very pronounced peaks and the highs drop like a rock to the right of the peaks. (Compared with the DiMarzio 36th Anniversary, you previously evaluated.)

... then I noticed the vertical scale.

[antigua]

Oct 2, 2016 22:05:00 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

Always read the fine print.

My first impression when seeing the bode plot with the cover on, was that the Seth Lovers have very pronounced peaks and the highs drop like a rock to the right of the peaks. (Compared with the DiMarzio 36th Anniversary, you previously evaluated.)

... then I noticed the vertical scale.

I need to redo the DiMarzio 36th Anniversary plots so that they will be 1dB scale like the others. The 5dB worked well for the Strat pickups, but it's too vague with humbuckers. 

As far as the plots in general go, between all these humbuckers I see barely any difference with the curve shapes. You see some with more or less eddy losses, some with higher or lower Q factors, but the loaded differences are far less than 1dB. Here is a site that demonstrates the audible difference of various decibel levels www.audiocheck.net/blindtests_level.php?lvl=1 

The resonant peaks differ a good amount though, on the low end you have 2.3kHz, and on the high end 2.8kHz . You can hear the frequencies directly with this tone generator www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/  

My "educated guess" as to how these pickups differ in practice is with respect to the resonant peak, because even though cable capacitance that shift the peak around, bright pickups remain bright pickups and dark ones remain dark ones.

Lots of colorful words are used to describe these pickups, like "tight bass", "scooped mids", that all suggests a level of tonal complexity that is not indicated by the plots, and so there becomes two possibilities: a) the RLC measurements miss something important, or b) what looks like a trivial difference has big psychological consequences. I believe the latter is more likely, due to a lack of evidence to the contrary, and the fact that these pickups share the same physical properties, to a substantial degree.