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Post by eljib on Feb 6, 2006 18:04:55 GMT -5
I'm helping a friend restore an old strat copy, and everything about this guitar is pointing to the fact that somebody really knew what they wanted when they assembled it.
-CBS headstock with the V shape contour;
-gison style nut (behind the fret board rather than imbeded inside of it);
-modified tele bridge (cut in half so as to allow for strat pickups);
-and finally, some really weird pickups...
They are tall single coils with a steel plate stuck to the bottom. A single wire connects this sheilding plate to ground. Behind the plate you see that the extra height is needed to house two magnets which are on either side of the standard sized pole pieces, which in turn have a single coil of winds around them. I don't think I have heard of stacked humbuckers like this. As far as I knew, HB's could be made using one magnet and two coils, but not the other way around. I took it down to my local guitar shop where the smarta$$ behind the repair counter informed me that I was holding a...pickup. (Brief pause for "Oohs" and "Ahhs" from the audience). So I left the store and made a mental note to reconsider everybit of information I had ever received from them, and decided I would take my question to you guys.
Has anyone ever seen a pickup with these descriptions? They don't sound that great, but I guess that could be due to the fastastic cold-solderjoint technique I've perfected. I don't want to replace them yet because the new ones we have wont fit without some "adjusting," and I'd like to be able to go back to these ones if there is someway to make them sound better. We have already done QTB, and added wolf's mods for on/off switches for each pickup, plus phasing and series/parallel switches. These options do not changed the tone dramatically.
Thanks
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Post by JohnH on Feb 6, 2006 18:16:09 GMT -5
Those pups are exactly like what I had on my Hondo Strat copy, from the '80s. They are just single coils, no pretensions at humbucking. The two magnets, plus 9k windings gave mine a powerful kick, I quite liked them. a much fuller sound than Ive heard on many cheap Strat copies.
However, one of them developed a fault, so I replaced them with GFS alnico vintage. I really like these new ones, they are 5.5 / 6k per coil, so less output, Suprisingly though, the quality of the GFS sound is not that different to the old ones, with a crisp top and powerful bass.
John
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Post by Mini-Strat_Maine on Feb 6, 2006 22:39:24 GMT -5
They are tall single coils with a steel plate stuck to the bottom. Could that be something akin to the "bass" or "base" plate advocated by some to get better sound out of the bridge pup on a Strat? Lindy Fralin sells them as an option for his singlecoils, and I think I've seen it spelled both ways (base/bass) on his site. I bought one from Singlecoil.com, but haven't tried it yet. Acme Guitar Works has sound clips of Fralin pups with and without the plates, and I think there's a difference in the tone. (But I can't say if it's "more Tele-like," as some claim it is.) www.acmeguitarworks.com/webpage.aspx?webpage_id=1Yoiurs aren't just held by magnetic attraction, right? When you say "stuck," I'm assuming you mean with something that's also serving as kind of an insulator to keep them from squealing. Sounds like one cool classic guitar.
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jester700
Meter Reader 1st Class
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Post by jester700 on Feb 6, 2006 23:05:56 GMT -5
Sounds like the pup was made to be LOUD. 2 magnets, baseplate... I bet it's a hot wind, too. I have an OBL similar to this idea, but it has a blade instead of poles. Most cheap import singles have one magnet underneath that contacts the bottom of the steel poles.
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Post by UnklMickey on Feb 6, 2006 23:14:16 GMT -5
...I took it down to my local guitar shop where the smarta$$ behind the repair counter informed me that I was holding a...pickup. (Brief pause for "Oohs" and "Ahhs" from the audience). So I left the store.... and you thought you could only get that kind of grief from unk!
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Post by eljib on Feb 7, 2006 2:36:25 GMT -5
Thanks for the input so far, guys. As far as the bass/base plate goes, it was definitely part of the original pickup design. It's even got six little holes in the bottom although the slug never reach them. Plus it perfectly fits the pup, which is a totaly odd size. Slightly thicker front to back; slightly thinner right to left...and way taller. The plate looks like it - was- held there by some kind of glue, or maybe old boogers. Right now it's just "stuck" there, and yes, I do mean by magnetism. The pups never squealled, but then again, they never got to watch Deliverance . Seriously, they were never really loud at all. Kinda muddy. I checked resistance today, and while I don't remember individual readings, I do recall that all three in series were 22.??K I'll post more as the discoveries keep pouring in.
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Post by JohnH on Feb 7, 2006 2:43:22 GMT -5
Yep - physically same as I have, right down to the magnetically stuck-on steel plate with 6 holes. The two mounting screws also go through these plates, to give a positive fix. But mine are way loud. J
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jester700
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Post by jester700 on Feb 7, 2006 8:04:03 GMT -5
eljib, I wonder if something's wrong with yours. I mean, with a ~7.5k per pickup wind (and on a tall coil I'm assuming 42awg wire) that should smoke like JohnH's.
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Post by eljib on Feb 7, 2006 15:30:13 GMT -5
Maybe so. Do you think this might be a hondo, JohnH? It's a plywood body made of hardwood. Looks kinda like alternating poplar or alder and then mahogany. The routing under the pickguard leaves enough room for ANY mod. I got to get my hands on a digital camera cause I really suck at describing it.
As for the pups, is there any way of salvaging them? Could bad pots or caps lead to this blah tone they put out?
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Post by JohnH on Feb 7, 2006 17:08:05 GMT -5
My guitar is the ToneMonster2 - so see it (with the original pups) on the schematics board. It also has huge routing - there was a wide slot under each pup, linking to a large swimming pool under most of the lower area of the pickguard. Another variation is that the three pots are mounted more forward than usual. See the volume control, not in line with the bridge pup but further forward, and the pg does not wrap partly around the bridge as normal. I know however, that Hondo made others with a conventional layout.
Theres also sound clips on the TM2 page, with these pups. These were to show the effects of the switching variations from my design, and were just directly injected without an amp, so they dont do the pups proper justice.
To test the pup sound, why not just wire them directly to the jack for a test?. When I first got the Hondo, it sounded like cr@p, but it has wiring that had been sadly butchered.
John ps - it was also of substantial laminated construction. Quite heavy
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Post by eljib on Feb 8, 2006 10:50:35 GMT -5
that sounds just like this one. At first we thought it was a special construction due to all the un-standard features. In fact the restoration came about because the new pickguard and pups wouldn't fit the body; otherwise I would have just tossed the whole thing (electronics). BTW, has anyone ever seen a replacement pickguard that does NOT wrap around the bridge? It looks really nice on this guitar, IMO.
EDIT: JohnH, do you have any advice for adding these new pups? The screw holes don't match up, and I'd like to keep the pickguard intact wherever possible, just in case he decides to switch back to the stock pups.
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Post by JohnH on Feb 9, 2006 14:46:40 GMT -5
that sounds just like this one. In fact the restoration came about because the new pickguard and pups wouldn't fit the body; Eljib - Im intetested in that point - do you mean that a standard Strat pg has been tried and found not to fit? In what way did it not fit and do you think it would be possible to rework one so that it did? - I'd quite like to get a new pg for mine, so I can drill my own holes rather than having to relate to the existing ones. When I removed the original pups and installed the GFS ones, I had that problem also. I expect that the GFS were standard size and the old Hondo pups wern't. The GFS's were slightly longer, but with slightly less distance between mounting holes, and also narrower. I just had to file a bit at the ends of the pg slot, and slightly ream the mounting holes into an oval. The resulting pg holes that I have now would work for either pup size. John
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Post by eljib on Feb 9, 2006 15:43:45 GMT -5
I bought a fully loaded MIM strat pg but had some (very fixable) problems with holes lining up. The biggest problem, IMO, was that the original pg didn't have a cutaway for the bridge, and the new one looked too darned silly with a big chunk missing out of it and nothing to fill the gap.
As for other replacements, I think you can order whole sheets of pg material from stewmac and cut your own to spec. The one drawback is that you'd have to route the edges diagonally yourself.
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Post by JohnH on Feb 9, 2006 16:03:59 GMT -5
I was thinking of getting a finished pg, with pup slots but no control holes. My design just needs round holes, so easy to do, but no 5-way slot. Wouldn't a standard pg need to wrap around the bridge as usual in order to fit in the space between bridge and neck?, or is the bridge a very different thing to normal?
thnks
J
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Post by Runewalker on Feb 9, 2006 22:27:47 GMT -5
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Post by eljib on Feb 16, 2006 3:04:17 GMT -5
JohnH: Did you have any problems with the pole pieces on the new pups lining up with your strings? I just finished the project and the high e is nearly exactly in between the b and e slugs on all three pickups.
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Post by JohnH on Feb 16, 2006 4:32:16 GMT -5
Eljib - Mine are also a bit out of whack, but not that much. The bridge pup is in reasonable alignment. On the other two, the low e string is about right and the high e is about 3 or 4 mm inside of the pole centreline
J
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