Post by antigua on Mar 9, 2018 2:46:50 GMT -5
As with other offsets in the Vintage Modified series, these pickups are "Duncan Designed" pickups, and again, the bridge pickup is a "hot" pickup. In modern times, "hot" can mean over-wound ever so slightly, but the VM Duncan Designed bridge pickups are "hot" in the 80's sense of the word, with an inductance that is 50% greater than the neck pickup.
As can be seen in the pics below, these are essentially flat poled Strat pickups, with the bridge pickup having an inverted orientation in order to fit a route that steers clear of the tremolo unit's cavity. Based on a Google search, it appears that original Mustang pickups were much the same. These DD pickups has plastic bobbins, and, just to aggravate and annoy, they epoxied the pickups into the cover, so that the two can't come apart. Not liking the pickups for personal reasons, I tried to get the cover off so I could mount them over different Strat pickups, but it didn't happen. There is a pic below of the wreckage.
Both the neck and bridge pickup feature ALNiCo 5 pole pieces, though they are a little weaker than comparable Stratocaster pole pieces, because they're slightly shorter in length, and the strength of AlNiCo is rather dependent on the dimensions of the magnet, due to it's relatively low coercive force.
The bridge pickup has an inductance of 3.6H and a loaded peak of 2.9kHz. By contrast, a typical Strat pickup has an inductance of only 2.4H, and a loaded peak around 4.0kHz, so the hot bridge pickup knocks about 1kHz off of what you'd get with a Strat. The bridge pickup has a DC resistance of 11.5k of 43AWG, which is equivalent to about 8.5k 42 AWG, like the neck pickup. Note that the "hotter" wind does not really make the pickup any louder, but merely makes it darker. The plot below shows about a 1dB difference in overall amplitude difference between the two pickups. Even though the bridge pickup has perhaps 1,500 more turns of wire than the neck pickup, it takes a lot more wire than that to get an appreciable boost in voltage output. The higher DC resistance also gives the bridge pickup a lower Q factor than the neck pickup, 4.3dB at resonance versus 5.4dB, with load.
Electrically, the neck pickup is closer to a standard 42 AWG Fender single coil. The inductance of 2.8H is closer to Strat bridge pickup, but not as a hot as a Tele bridge. Hotter than a typical neck pickup, in any case.
What is really worth noting about both the bridge and neck pickup is that they are a lot darker than they should be, given the inductances, and the reason is because they feature aluminum foil shielding around their coils, as can be seen in the pic of the destroyed pickup below. I'm not aware that Fender has ever done this in the US, it seems to strictly be a feature of imported pickups. The foil wrapped around the coil capacitively couples with the coil to produce a rather high capacitance. According the math, the bridge shows about 350pF, and the neck 460pF. A typical Fender single coil has only 130pF capacitance, so this surrounding copper foil causes the capacitance to increase by 200-300pF. For the sake of comparison, a 10ft guitar cable contains about 400pF capacitance, so this foil shielding add about as much capacitance as if you were to extend your 10ft guitar cable out to about 18ft, resulting in a darker overall tone. Despite the very different inductance of neck and bridge pickups, they fact that they both contain this high capacitance results in a similar and low loaded peak resonance of 2.9kHz, which is about 1kHz lower that a typical Strat pickup, with a loaded peak closer to 4kHz. The worst part about it is that these pickups were still very noisy, at least for me.
Though these pickups are dark, due to both a high inductance and capacitance, I notice a lot of Mustangs (and other offsets) come stock his humbuckers and P-90's, apparently catering to guitarists who plan to use their offsets in a hard rock / punk rock capacity, rather than surf or new wave, so these "hot" single coils might be conducive to punk rock, though it should be noted that their output voltage is still rather minimal, and they certainly won't push an amp as hard as a humbucker, or even a P-90.
Measurements:
Duncan Designed Mustang Bridge SC101B/ADWHCD 1707
- DC Resistance: 11.53K ohms
- Measured L: 3.587H
- Calculated C: 353pF (363 - 10)
- Gauss: 900G (600G top of plastic)
Duncan Designed Mustang Neck SC101M/ADWHCD 1707
- DC Resistance: 7.11K ohms
- Measured L: 2.754H
- Calculated C: 463pF (473 - 10)
- Gauss: 900G (600G top of plastic)
Bridge unloaded: dV: 8.9dB f: 4.41kHz (black)
Bridge loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 4.3dB f: 2.89kHZ (blue)
Neck unloaded: dV: 9.6dB f: 4.46kHz (red)
Neck loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 5.4dB f: 2.93kHz (green)
The MV Mustang has 250k pots and, interestingly, a 0.05uF capacitor, which I have not come across in any other guitar, but is close enough to the more common .047uF. Because of the high capacitance of these pickups with the copper foil shielding, turning down the tone knob resulted in an especially dark tone, more similar to the result you'd get with a 0.1uF cap.
I wasn't digging the electrical values of the DD's, so I tried to get the guts away from the cover, so I could put something else underneath. It didn't work out though, I ended up having install Strat pickups along with Strat pickup covers.
The plastic bobbin was glued in so tightly to the cover, that the bottom half ripped away from the upper half, and never did come lose. The epoxy / glue is probably stronger than the plastic itself.
At $300 the guitar seems like a rather solid dead, although the fret work and fingerboard definitely look a little rough. It's definitely not quite as neat as the VM Jaguar or Jazz Master I have on hand. It plays and sounds great (now) though. With the shorter scale, lower output pickups and the firmer bridge/tremolo network, it reminds me a lot of the Jaguar with a Buzz Stop installed. The neck profile also feels a bit thicker.
I swapped in a new white pick guard, along with lower inductance flat poled Strat pickups. I really dig the white pick guard against 50's automotive, pastel look, especially with the Fender offsets, and all the accompanying chrome.
