Post by antigua on Feb 21, 2019 6:54:44 GMT -5
On Amazon I happened across this pickup set www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H5LWVWL/?tag=strattalk05-20 , basically a Chinese knock off of the Seymour Duncan Everything Axe pickup set, for only $33.64. I wasn't really in the market for these pickups otherwise, but it looked like it could potentially be a good deal, but it turns out the set is not really worth messing with, for any price. Amazon sells decent ceramic "Rails" style humbuckers for as little as $11 apiece that would be a better buy, although obviously not having this particular aesthetic.
Here is a review of the Seymour Duncan Little '59 set for comparison guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/7905/seymour-duncan-little-analysis-review
The first problem is that it was advertised as three "ALNICO V" pickups, but the bridge pickup has a ceramic bar, and sure enough, while the other two pickups say "ALNICO V" on top, the ceramic bridge is just plain plastic, so they lied in the Amazon listing, but are truthful on the product itself. The listed DC resistance values also have no correlation with reality, neither on Amazon nor the box they arrived in, the values of which are all different.
The second problem is that those AlNiCo bars produce very weak magnetic fields, and the fact that middle pickup only has six screws instead of twelve, makes matters worse. The bridge pickup, with its ceramic bar measures 450 Gauss at the screw tops, which is good, but the middle and neck with their AlNiCo bars barely reach 150 and 200 Gauss, which is very weak, especially when you consider that the screws have such a tiny surface area, where about that small flux density is realize. The Little '59's by contrast produce 600 Gauss at the screw tops, which is impressive in that it's stronger than similar Rails pickups, due to how the flux is guided and concentrated towards the screws. I used to have a set of Seymour Duncan Custom Shop Little Pearly Gates which were basically same with AlNiCo 5 bars (though they cost about fifteen times the price), and I'd describe it as anemic. You pick hard, but only soft sounds emerges from the amp and speaker.
The third problem is that because the bridge pickup had a ceramic bar, which has no permeability, it's inductance is much lower than the neck or middle, by well over 1 henry, and the loaded resonant peak of the bridge pickup is a few hundred hertz higher than the neck or middle. AlNiCo the metal is permeable, and it makes a pickup hotter just by being there. Therefore the neck and middle are the "hot" pickups of the set, which is generally the opposite of what you would expect. The neck and middle also have lower Q factors, due to the eddy currents caused by the AlNiCo bars.
The fourth problem is that, where as most painted on logos can be cleaned off with a metal polish, the "ALNICO V" lettering on the tops is sort of sunk in, or branded into the top of the plastic. There is nothing to wipe away so much as to fill in, which isn't practical to do, so you're stuck with pickups that say "ALNICO V" on top of them.
Not really a problem, the DC resistances for the pickups vary by a lot, and don't seem to track at all with their inductance values. It's not likely they used different gauges of wire for these coils, so my best guess would be some defect in the solder joints or the wire itself causes a higher resistance.
The split tone looks like it could be promising if not for the weak magnetic fields. The loaded resonant peaks of around 5kHz are high enough to allow for a bright output, but there's nearly a -10dB drop in output when split, which added to the weak magnetic field, would make for a very bad signal to noise ratio. On top of that, the middle pickup only has screws on one side of each coil, which makes it ill suited for splitting to one coil.
Interestingly the capacitance is a lot lower with these pickups than the Little 59, by about 200pF. Unfortunately it's not a simple matter to figure out why that is. These pickups do have much shorter lead wires, but that would account for no more than 30pF of difference.
Overall this is a cautionary tale, and I advise staying away, but if all three of these pickup had used ceramic bars, I think it would have been a pretty good deal. If I see such a set for sale, I might pick it up, because the ceramic bridge pickup alone was not bad, not bad at all. The set is so cheap I that I could but three sets, and throw out the AlNiCo pickups and use just the bridge pickups, but I have no assurance that the next set will even have that ceramic pickup in it, since it was not spec'd that way in the listing, so that's a no go.
Chinese Knockoff of Seymour Duncan Everything Axe Set
Bridge
- DC Resistance: 9.187K ohms
- Measured L: 3.923H
- Calculated C: 109pF (119-10)
- Gauss: 450G (ceramic)
Middle
- DC Resistance: 14.9K ohms
- Measured L: 5.413H
- Calculated C: 106pF (116-10)
- Gauss: 200G (AlNiCo)
Neck
- DC Resistance: 8.800K ohms
- Measured L: 5.199H
- Calculated C: 110pF (120-10)
- Gauss: 150G (AlNiCo)
Bridge unloaded: dV: 5.9dB f: 7.37kHz (black)
Bridge loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 2.6dB f: 3.13kHz (blue)
Br Split unloaded: dV: 2.6dB f: 10.7 kHz (red)
Br Split loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 0.4dB f: 5.54kHz (green)
Middle unloaded: dV: 2.8dB f: 6.36kHz (black)
Middle loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 0.0dB f: 2.70kHz (blue)
Md Split unloaded: dV:-0.7dB f: 9.59kHz (red)
Md Split loaded (200k & 470pF): dV:-2.4dB f: 4.67kHz (green)
Neck unloaded: dV: 1.3dB f: 6.36kHz (black)
Neck loaded (200k & 470pF): dV:-0.6dB f: 2.86kHz (blue)
Nk Split unloaded: dV: 2.0dB f: 10.2 kHz (red)
Nk Split loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 3.3dB f: 5.06kHz (green)
I did something different this time for the split plots, I have the secondary coil shorted, as it would be with typical splitting wiring schemes, and so the plot more closely resembles what happens in a real situation. Splitting in general causes about a -5dB drop in output, but the shorted secondary in this case causes heavy eddy current attenuation, causing additional -5dB or so of volume drop as it approaches the resonant frequency, for an overall drop of about -10dB.
The box these pickups arrived in was obviously intended for a different set of pickups with wood tops. It's interesting to see what Chinese marketers think American customers want; a hand made pickup from a trustworthy brand that appeals to our patriotic pride. It came like this, with boxing tape wrapped around it.
AlNiCo, AlNiCo, ceramic:
Testing with Ken Willmott's slick, new V5.8 integrator device kenwillmott.com/blog/ plugged into a Velleman PCSU200, with the function generator attached to a small 100 turn excitation coil that is placed over the pickup.
This kills the pickup:
