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Post by antigua on Apr 23, 2022 18:46:48 GMT -5
AliExpress lists Epiphone Pro-Buckers for a really good deal, somewhere between $35 and $50 for a set of two Pro Buckers, depending on the options, which includes a wiring kit complete with pots, input jack and a toggle, which are a good deal too, if you consider the cost per component sold separately, although the tone pots are linear, and probably shouldn't be used. (One odd thing is that I'm seeing linear pots used for tone pots in many low cost Chinese guitars, but both volume and tone should be log / audio pots). I've seen OEM Pro Buckers from actual Epiphones that I've bought, and testing shows that they all had nickel silver covers, with a high Q factor, even the Pro-Buckers with gold plated covers. The sets sold on AliExpress look very convincing from the outside, very much like the OEM pickups, including the molex connectors that are used in Epiphone guitars. So I ordered bunch of these pickups, because they take so long to arrive from China, I bit the bullet and ordered about as many as I planned to use before getting a couple of them to quality test, and it turned out, the four chrome covered Alnico Classic Pro's seem to be as good as the OEMs I've already seen, but the twelve gold covered humbuckers are a grab bag of pickups that don't seem to be "OEM correct". The bottom line before going any farther is that I think purchasing the chrome covered Pro Buckers with vintage braid wire, on AliExpress, is a great deal, but buying any with the gold cover and 4 conductor wire means a 50/50 chance you will get brass covered pickup with other non OEM attributes. The nice thing about the authentic Pro-Bucker line, which I've seen in my own, is nickel silver covers, base plates and covers, as well as the nice touch of having a wood spacer instead of a plastic one. Unfortunately, of the sixteen pickups in total, four of them don't have nickel silver covers, and there's no way to know which is the case by sight alone. Luckily, the DE-5000 LCR meter is able to tell the cover materials apart very reliably with the Q measurements at 1kHz. If the humbucker has a nickel silver cover, the Q measures somewhere above 2, around 2.1, and if it doesn't, somewhere below 2.0, like 1.7, and you can see these values in the table I pasted below. The only pickups that had brass covers were among the gold covers. Some might speculate that these are "b-stock" or blemished stock, but I believe the chrome covered Alnico Classic Pros are about as good as you can expect from the OEM stock pickups. The gold covered Alnico Classic Pro have a mix of brass and nickel silver covers, and the Pro-Buckers have peculiar screws that are only found on particularly cheap humbuckers from China, ones where the ends of the shaft is smooth and lacks threads, as seen in a pic below. Differences like that wouldn't be found in "b-stock". A real possibility is that the chrome covered pickups are authentic while the gold colored ones are more or less counterfeit, although I bought both from the same seller, and it seems strange to me that one seller would sell a mix of authentic and counterfeit goods. Here's a pic of the lot: The chrome covered Alnico Classic Pros are better quality under the covers also The chrome covered Alnico Classic Pro on the right has vintage style paper tape, thicker bobbin plastic, vintage correct filister screws and a real wood spacer. The gold covered Alnico Classic Pro on the left is opposite of that, thin bobbins, Kapton coil tape, cheap screws without threads at the ends, and a plastic spacer. Also not visible in this pic, but in a picture further down, but the chrome covered pickup also has a more authentic looking part label stuck on bottom. On the bright side, all have actual AlNiCo bar magnets. And here's data for the lot, with the disappointing brass covers pickups in bold. A few observations, based on the values above... - All of the pickups have AlNiCo bar magnets, but for whatever reason, the two Pro-Buckers read a much higher magnetic strength, ~350 gauss, very high for AlNiCo 5, but not quite as high as would be expected with ceramic, usually measuring above 400 gauss. I removed the covers to make sure there wasn't a ceramic magnet inside. AlNiCo can vary in charge strength and formulation, so I'd guess it's just a peculiarity of those particular AlNiCo bars. - The four chrome covered Alnico Classic Pro pickups are of good quality electrically as well as in every other way, with inductance values that are very alike, and they came with vintage style hookup wire. The ten gold covered ones have inductance values that vary a lot. - Of the sixteen pickups in total, twelve appear to have nickel silver covers, four don't. The two Pro-Buckers, bottom right in the picture, appear to be brass and have the worst Q factor of them all. In a bode plot: Two of the Alnico Classic Pros have "brass" bridge pickups, but "nickel silver" neck pickups, and the difference between the brass, nickel silver and no cover at all looks like this... note that the nickel silver and "no cover" have near identical loaded Q factors underscoring why nickel silver is so desirable as a cover metal. The brass on the other hand shows a 2dB loss with load, and a 6dB loss without. It looks to me like the manufacturer stocks both brass and nickel silver covers in their production facility, and just aren't very careful about making sure that the Pro-Bucker or Alnico Classic Pro's receive the correct cover, at least in the case of the gold colored humbuckers. - The shades of gold on these pickups are off. Looking at the picture, the shade of gold on the ten Alnico Pro pickups is more pale and pinkish looking (and they're not all 100% alike either), where as the two Pro Buckers are a much more yellow shade of gold, with the neck pickup in particular looking almost bronze-like. - All of the screw sides on all of the pickups are "south up", but the Pro-Bucker bridge is "north up" while the neck is "south up". Sometimes that's not a mistake, it's a design choice, but in this case, I'd guess it is a mistake. Another tell tale relating to the quality, the gold covered humbuckers, the two at the top of this photo, have cheaper looking part number labels, with faded ink in a font that's a little smaller. The chrome covered humbucker at the bottom, it has a rather correct looking label with perfectly clean printing and font that looks typical of actual OEM Pro-Buckers. Given how cheap the pickups cost, I don't feel like I was ripped off too bad for the gold colored Epi branded Ali Express humbuckers, since I'm able to use the Q factor readings to sort out the four bad apples of the total lot of sixteen, but if someone doesn't have a DE-5000, and they only plan to buy one or two sets, it would be a total gamble and you'd have no way of knowing if you won or lost. The chrome covered Epi branded pickups on the other hand look pretty great, and I'd definitely chance buying them again in the future.
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timtam
Meter Reader 1st Class
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Post by timtam on Apr 23, 2022 21:49:19 GMT -5
Very interesting detective work. These have been around for a long time on ebay etc, since Epiphone re-jigged their pickups some years ago. AFAIK you can't buy Epiphone pickups direct from Epiphone/legit dealers. But Epiphone must know about these ali/ebay ones.
The number of little external features on these pickups that match the real thing has suggested that they were probably legit - far more trouble/detail than fakers would usually be expected to go to. And why would a faker go after Epiphone rather than more highly-regarded pickups ? So the most likely possibilities were that they were all legit or maybe that they were all (very good replica) fakes. The possibility that some are legit/good-quality, but others are not, seemed like the least likely possibility. Until now.
Is there any evidence of brass covers amongst Epiphone's real current-generation OEM pickups ? Epiphone do have a wide range of HB-equipped guitars, from lower to higher quality. But the cheapest mostly have cover-less (and hotter?) HBs.
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Post by antigua on Apr 23, 2022 22:06:20 GMT -5
Very interesting detective work. These have been around for a long time on ebay etc, since Epiphone re-jigged their pickups some years ago. AFAIK you can't buy Epiphone pickups direct from Epiphone/legit dealers. But Epiphone must know about these ali/ebay ones.
The number of little external features on these pickups that match the real thing has suggested that they were probably legit - far more trouble/detail than fakers would usually be expected to go to. And why would a faker go after Epiphone rather than more highly-regarded pickups ? So the most likely possibilities were that they were all legit or maybe that they were all (very good replica) fakes. The possibility that some are legit/good-quality, but others are not, seemed like the least likely possibility. Until now.
Is there any evidence of brass covers amongst Epiphone's real current-generation OEM pickups ? Epiphone do have a wide range of HB-equipped guitars, from lower to higher quality. But the cheapest mostly have cover-less (and hotter?) HBs.
I don't have a large sample of real OEM Pro-Buckers, but the ones I have match the quality specs of having wood spacers, nickel silver covers, etc. I don't believe these gold pickups could be found in actual Epiphones, not just because of the cheaper parts, but the fake looking product stickers on the bottom, and the strange shades of gold that are all over the place. It's really strange to see what appears to be real and counterfeit quality OEM parts sold by a single vendor. If I were buying covered pickups site unseen again, I'd only buy the ones with the vintage braided hookup wire, as I think that's a strong indicator that the rest of the pickup is probably of good quality also.
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log
Rookie Solder Flinger
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Post by log on Apr 26, 2022 10:09:01 GMT -5
I have a pair of Alnico Classic Pro's I pulled from my Epi. They were the 3rd set I tried in an LP style guitar that I've been modding. They were a good fit for it.
Epiphone has made great improvements on their pickups, over the Ceramic Plus level of quality. (They claim those are built the same as the PRO ones, they are not.)
I'm new here, and have browsed quite extensively, but I am curious about when I see it talked about clipping/shortening the pole piece screws on some of these tests on PAF format humbuckers, and I understand about it increasing the magnetic flux, but I cant seem to find what effect that results in tonewise.
Thanks by the way, for these tests, I may not understand them completely but they give great insight, especially on the budget end of things.
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Post by antigua on Apr 26, 2022 18:20:19 GMT -5
I have a pair of Alnico Classic Pro's I pulled from my Epi. They were the 3rd set I tried in an LP style guitar that I've been modding. They were a good fit for it. Epiphone has made great improvements on their pickups, over the Ceramic Plus level of quality. (They claim those are built the same as the PRO ones, they are not.) I'm new here, and have browsed quite extensively, but I am curious about when I see it talked about clipping/shortening the pole piece screws on some of these tests on PAF format humbuckers, and I understand about it increasing the magnetic flux, but I cant seem to find what effect that results in tonewise. Thanks by the way, for these tests, I may not understand them completely but they give great insight, especially on the budget end of things. Clipping the screws makes the magnetic field strong at the tops of the screws. When the bar magnet meets the screws about half way, as a result of the fact that that the screws are perpendicular to the magnet, the top of the screw becomes magnetized "south up", but the bottom half of the screw magnetizes "north up". So it's like the two sides of the screw are trying to cancel each other out. The result is that neither the top or the bottom of the screw has as much magnetic charge as it would if the opposing side were not there. I hadn't heard of the Ceramic Plus, but I found a pic on Reverb: They look like they have the same base plate as the Pro Bucker and Alnico Classic Pro, as well as a similar product label. All I know about the Epiphone pickups is that prior to the Pro-Buckers and other humbuckers like this one, they usually had "BHC" and "BHK", supposedly this is short for "BooHeung China" or "BooHeung Korea", and that brand of pickup is found in lots of budget guitars. They looked like this: Because there's such a fine division between the BHC / BHK parts, and the subsequent Pro-Buckers, I'm inclined to believe that all the pickups with the characteristic nickel silver "designed by Epiphone USA" pickups come from a single supplier. Maybe what has happened is that Epiphone contracts from some company to produce the Pro-Buckers, but then that company has overstock, so they whip together cheap pickups with those leftover parts and dump them on AliExpress. Epiphone sells the Pro-Buckers on their site for about $150 for a set, which is about three times as much as these go for on AliExpress. That's could explain the hot or miss nature, the low price and "direct from China" retail path.
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log
Rookie Solder Flinger
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Post by log on Apr 26, 2022 19:56:41 GMT -5
I have a pair of Alnico Classic Pro's I pulled from my Epi. They were the 3rd set I tried in an LP style guitar that I've been modding. They were a good fit for it. Epiphone has made great improvements on their pickups, over the Ceramic Plus level of quality. (They claim those are built the same as the PRO ones, they are not.) I'm new here, and have browsed quite extensively, but I am curious about when I see it talked about clipping/shortening the pole piece screws on some of these tests on PAF format humbuckers, and I understand about it increasing the magnetic flux, but I cant seem to find what effect that results in tonewise. Thanks by the way, for these tests, I may not understand them completely but they give great insight, especially on the budget end of things. Clipping the screws makes the magnetic field strong at the tops of the screws. When the bar magnet meets the screws about half way, as a result of the fact that that the screws are perpendicular to the magnet, the top of the screw becomes magnetized "south up", but the bottom half of the screw magnetizes "north up". So it's like the two sides of the screw are trying to cancel each other out. The result is that neither the top or the bottom of the screw has as much magnetic charge as it would if the opposing side were not there. I hadn't heard of the Ceramic Plus, but I found a pic on Reverb: They look like they have the same base plate as the Pro Bucker and Alnico Classic Pro, as well as a similar product label. All I know about the Epiphone pickups is that prior to the Pro-Buckers and other humbuckers like this one, they usually had "BHC" and "BHK", supposedly this is short for "BooHeung China" or "BooHeung Korea", and that brand of pickup is found in lots of budget guitars. They looked like this: Because there's such a fine division between the BHC / BHK parts, and the subsequent Pro-Buckers, I'm inclined to believe that all the pickups with the characteristic nickel silver "designed by Epiphone USA" pickups come from a single supplier. Maybe what has happened is that Epiphone contracts from some company to produce the Pro-Buckers, but then that company has overstock, so they whip together cheap pickups with those leftover parts and dump them on AliExpress. Epiphone sells the Pro-Buckers on their site for about $150 for a set, which is about three times as much as these go for on AliExpress. That's could explain the hot or miss nature, the low price and "direct from China" retail path. I greatly appreciate the detailed response. I understood about the excess length of the polescrews past the bar magnet counteracting the sensing side, well, understand may be an overstatement, but understand the theory. I was asking about its effect on sound/tone. I have tried to word my searches well but I haven't been able to learn what effect those alterations made, other than output, if any. I know tone is subjective etc. I may be misinformed on the Ceramic Plus humbuckers, as Epiphone seems to be cagey and such with info, but I was under the impression the 650R/700T were the Ceramic Plus set, although I have seen at least 2 different DCR readings for the 700T. The set I had used brass baseplates, probably with those initials you listed, or simply N or B I dont remember. They were constructed pretty poorly as well, one of the bobbin screws were stripped on each pickup. I converted them to 4 conductor, which was successful with 2 new screws. I don't know the proper terminology, but when each was wired with the SD equivalent red & white tied and grounded,the neck shorted the screw as expected but bridge shorted slug. I don't know how common that is. They were great sounding pickups though. I see in the one's you posted, they do look like one would expect that model should, the sticker prefix follows the same type as the ACP on the beginning of that model. Epiphone perhaps has many versions of "Ceramic Plus"? They talked at great length about their use of Ceramic 8.
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Post by antigua on Apr 28, 2022 11:30:24 GMT -5
I greatly appreciate the detailed response. I understood about the excess length of the polescrews past the bar magnet counteracting the sensing side, well, understand may be an overstatement, but understand the theory. I was asking about its effect on sound/tone. I have tried to word my searches well but I haven't been able to learn what effect those alterations made, other than output, if any. I know tone is subjective etc. I've done experiments in the past using FFT analysis guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/7998/tonal-effect-pickup-height . When the magnetism is stronger, the pickup pulls on the guitar strings, and that causes an asymmetrical amount of tension across the guitar string, which in turns moves the kinetic energy of the string movement away from the lower harmonics, into the higher harmonics. The specific harmonics that are impacted is determined by where the pickup is located. Magnetic pull at the very ends of the strings causes a fairly uniform shift upwards, because that's where all of the harmonic nodes coalesce, but anywhere else along the string there's a mix of nodes and anti-nodes It's very similar to pinch harmonics, but where as the finger touch causes an abrupt shift from the pinched harmonic to the higher harmonics, magnet pull causes a soft, partial shift. You can also experiment by hold a neodymium over the strings to hear out the very strong magnetic pull changes the tone (be sure not to touch the pickups with the neo though) The overall end result is a perceived increase in treble, but because it's harmonic dependent, it's technically a complex alteration of the timbre. Where as a bright pickup with low inductance reveals more treble through a lack of high end filtering, a strong magnetic pull actually creates more treble, which can even be heard acoustically.
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log
Rookie Solder Flinger
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Post by log on Apr 28, 2022 16:32:57 GMT -5
I greatly appreciate the detailed response. I understood about the excess length of the polescrews past the bar magnet counteracting the sensing side, well, understand may be an overstatement, but understand the theory. I was asking about its effect on sound/tone. I have tried to word my searches well but I haven't been able to learn what effect those alterations made, other than output, if any. I know tone is subjective etc. I've done experiments in the past using FFT analysis guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/7998/tonal-effect-pickup-height . When the magnetism is stronger, the pickup pulls on the guitar strings, and that causes an asymmetrical amount of tension across the guitar string, which in turns moves the kinetic energy of the string movement away from the lower harmonics, into the higher harmonics. The specific harmonics that are impacted is determined by where the pickup is located. Magnetic pull at the very ends of the strings causes a fairly uniform shift upwards, because that's where all of the harmonic nodes coalesce, but anywhere else along the string there's a mix of nodes and anti-nodes It's very similar to pinch harmonics, but where as the finger touch causes an abrupt shift from the pinched harmonic to the higher harmonics, magnet pull causes a soft, partial shift. You can also experiment by hold a neodymium over the strings to hear out the very strong magnetic pull changes the tone (be sure not to touch the pickups with the neo though) The overall end result is a perceived increase in treble, but because it's harmonic dependent, it's technically a complex alteration of the timbre. Where as a bright pickup with low inductance reveals more treble through a lack of high end filtering, a strong magnetic pull actually creates more treble, which can even be heard acoustically. That is very revealing. I'm not sure where I got the idea, but I had associated stronger magnetism with lower frequencies. Your tests and graph makes perfect sense, if you think about how plucking/strumming in different places results in a different sound from the pickups. That may be an inaccurate analogy though.
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Post by antigua on Apr 28, 2022 18:56:54 GMT -5
That is very revealing. I'm not sure where I got the idea, but I had associated stronger magnetism with lower frequencies. Your tests and graph makes perfect sense, if you think about how plucking/strumming in different places results in a different sound from the pickups. That may be an inaccurate analogy though. It's the same principle of asymmetrical string movement, and the longer the string vibrates, the more symmetrical the string movement becomes. So if you pluck a guitar string in different places, it sounds different for the first few seconds, but at the very tail end of the vibration, before it goes silent, the different plucks all sound the same. The effect magnetic string pull never stops, of course.
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bw13
Apprentice Shielder
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Post by bw13 on Jul 14, 2022 19:53:11 GMT -5
Hi Antigua, can you link up the seller i wanna find the ones with braided shield and nickel silver cover with correct screws i might chat with the guy to ensure, tia P.s. i looked up for customer review photos and some of em are non threaded screw neck and standard oem on bridge... So yea.. weird Also i saw the new fleors (with yellow band on wire end) and they seem they upped the game with screws and my guess (by the look of cover ends) is covers are nickel silver (though i dont care much about covers) a.aliexpress.com/_mqh3QHC
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Post by antigua on Jul 15, 2022 0:56:26 GMT -5
Hi Antigua, can you link up the seller i wanna find the ones with braided shield and nickel silver cover with correct screws i might chat with the guy to ensure, tia P.s. i looked up for customer review photos and some of em are non threaded screw neck and standard oem on bridge... So yea.. weird Also i saw the new fleors (with yellow band on wire end) and they seem they upped the game with screws and my guess (by the look of cover ends) is covers are nickel silver (though i dont care much about covers) a.aliexpress.com/_mqh3QHCClick here and then click any option from "Kit 01" to "Kit 06", which all have nickel silver covers with braided wire, as indicated in the pictures. The other options with the gold covers or the 4 conductor hookup seem to be the ones of lower quality. www.aliexpress.com/item/3256801276206075.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.4eb2189cawyPHU&algo_pvid=31ac9263-9c89-438d-89b4-a1de36706cc9&algo_exp_id=31ac9263-9c89-438d-89b4-a1de36706cc9-0&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000016215546075%22%7D&pdp_npi=2%40dis%21USD%21%2141.45%21%21%21%21%21%402101d68d16578638825912172ef488%2112000016215546075%21seaThat FLEOR set looks pretty good too, but the Epiphone nickel silver cover linked above has a wood spacer and vintage correct filister screws, they really do feel like they should cost over $100 a pickup, given how close they look and feel to the Seymour Duncan '59, or a DiMarzio PAF model. The FLEOR probably uses the premium materials as promised but it looks like they're using the screws that have only partial threading, and whatever the situation is under the cover, probably no wood spacer. At $18 for one FLEOR humbucker, that's about the same price as the set of Epiphone Pro Buckers for $38, so I'd still buy the Pro Buckers.
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Post by roadtonever on Jul 15, 2022 6:32:53 GMT -5
antiguaCan you speak to the magnetic pull of inexpensive Asian pickups in general? I got spoiled by some Bill Lawrence pickups, I could set them closer to the strings for tonal reasons without as much warbling notes high on the neck. I've read a little bit about how Bills designs reduce string pull, but the Gauss reading looks lower with other brands if anything when I look at the pickup database?
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Post by antigua on Jul 15, 2022 12:20:35 GMT -5
antiguaCan you speak to the magnetic pull of inexpensive Asian pickups in general? I got spoiled by some Bill Lawrence pickups, I could set them closer to the strings for tonal reasons without as much warbling notes high on the neck. I've read a little bit about how Bills designs reduce string pull, but the Gauss reading looks lower with other brands if anything when I look at the pickup database? I don't personally think magnetic pull is a problem unless you measure over 1000 gauss at the pole tops. Even with a large ceramic magnet in a PAF style pickup, it's unusual to get a reading above 500 gauss. In general, if you want the least amount of warble with the highest output, the idea is to have a highly permeable core, like steel, so that the coupling coefficient between the strings and the core will be as high as possible, and then provide just enough of a remnant magnetic field to the circuit to create a magnetic difference when the guitar string moves around. The high coupling between strings and the coil core is what is most important, the magnetic field can be pretty weak and the voltage will still be high enough for most guitarists to be satisfied. The magnet doesn't even have to be under the pickup, as in the case of a HiLo'Tron, you could even put the magnet bedside the coil instead of underneath it, and there have even been some guitar pickup designed that relied solely on the guitar strings themselves having remnant magnetism by rubbing the guitars strings with a magnet periodically, and that design would certainly give you the least amount of "interference" from string pull, since there is no fixed magnet at all, but then again the output is likely very low because the steel strings can't support much remnant magnetism on their own. In this way of thinking, Fender pickups are a bad design because the AlNiCo poles have a low permeability, and therefore a bad coupling coefficient between the strings and the pole pieces, and they have to make up for it with a much stronger remnant magnetic field, A5 poles measure over 1000 gauss at the tops when fully saturated from the factory, and that does cause noticeable string warble with the wound strings when fretting higher up the neck, which brings the fatter steel strings very close to the strong magnetic pole pieces. But on the other hand, some degree of warble, which is technically harmonic interference and beating, and it can subjectively make a guitar sound more interesting than it would otherwise. It's like a mild chorus effect. I've never had any of the more popular Bill Lawrence pickups to test, so I don't know much about their magnetic coupling potential, but I know some have a very thin blade. I'd guess the coupling is weaker than with full sized screws and poles.
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bw13
Apprentice Shielder
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Post by bw13 on Jul 15, 2022 15:32:39 GMT -5
Hi Antigua, can you link up the seller i wanna find the ones with braided shield and nickel silver cover with correct screws i might chat with the guy to ensure, tia P.s. i looked up for customer review photos and some of em are non threaded screw neck and standard oem on bridge... So yea.. weird Also i saw the new fleors (with yellow band on wire end) and they seem they upped the game with screws and my guess (by the look of cover ends) is covers are nickel silver (though i dont care much about covers) a.aliexpress.com/_mqh3QHCClick here and then click any option from "Kit 01" to "Kit 06", which all have nickel silver covers with braided wire, as indicated in the pictures. The other options with the gold covers or the 4 conductor hookup seem to be the ones of lower quality. www.aliexpress.com/item/3256801276206075.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.4eb2189cawyPHU&algo_pvid=31ac9263-9c89-438d-89b4-a1de36706cc9&algo_exp_id=31ac9263-9c89-438d-89b4-a1de36706cc9-0&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000016215546075%22%7D&pdp_npi=2%40dis%21USD%21%2141.45%21%21%21%21%21%402101d68d16578638825912172ef488%2112000016215546075%21seaThat FLEOR set looks pretty good too, but the Epiphone nickel silver cover linked above has a wood spacer and vintage correct filister screws, they really do feel like they should cost over $100 a pickup, given how close they look and feel to the Seymour Duncan '59, or a DiMarzio PAF model. The FLEOR probably uses the premium materials as promised but it looks like they're using the screws that have only partial threading, and whatever the situation is under the cover, probably no wood spacer. At $18 for one FLEOR humbucker, that's about the same price as the set of Epiphone Pro Buckers for $38, so I'd still buy the Pro Buckers. I'm exactly on buying 59/pafpro pickup But i dont care about covers ... So now im thinking between ivory donlis (that i suggested couple months ago) or probuckers Did you compare those two? (Better quality PBs and donlis?) I mean not even by full analysis, like by ear...
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Post by thetragichero on Jul 18, 2022 7:52:06 GMT -5
from what i understand the epiphone probuckers are the cheap (in terms of labor cost) version of the gibson burstbucker pros, which are highly regarded. for 40 bucks per set it's kind of a no-brainer (i have an epiphone alnico pro and an ibanez infinity in my gibson les paul that i purchased stripped. magnet swaps and changed pole pieces and wired for 4 conductor cable but they sound pretty darn good)
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Post by roadtonever on Jul 27, 2022 12:10:39 GMT -5
antiguaCan you speak to the magnetic pull of inexpensive Asian pickups in general? I got spoiled by some Bill Lawrence pickups, I could set them closer to the strings for tonal reasons without as much warbling notes high on the neck. I've read a little bit about how Bills designs reduce string pull, but the Gauss reading looks lower with other brands if anything when I look at the pickup database? I don't personally think magnetic pull is a problem unless you measure over 1000 gauss at the pole tops. Even with a large ceramic magnet in a PAF style pickup, it's unusual to get a reading above 500 gauss. In general, if you want the least amount of warble with the highest output, the idea is to have a highly permeable core, like steel, so that the coupling coefficient between the strings and the core will be as high as possible, and then provide just enough of a remnant magnetic field to the circuit to create a magnetic difference when the guitar string moves around. The high coupling between strings and the coil core is what is most important, the magnetic field can be pretty weak and the voltage will still be high enough for most guitarists to be satisfied. The magnet doesn't even have to be under the pickup, as in the case of a HiLo'Tron, you could even put the magnet bedside the coil instead of underneath it, and there have even been some guitar pickup designed that relied solely on the guitar strings themselves having remnant magnetism by rubbing the guitars strings with a magnet periodically, and that design would certainly give you the least amount of "interference" from string pull, since there is no fixed magnet at all, but then again the output is likely very low because the steel strings can't support much remnant magnetism on their own. In this way of thinking, Fender pickups are a bad design because the AlNiCo poles have a low permeability, and therefore a bad coupling coefficient between the strings and the pole pieces, and they have to make up for it with a much stronger remnant magnetic field, A5 poles measure over 1000 gauss at the tops when fully saturated from the factory, and that does cause noticeable string warble with the wound strings when fretting higher up the neck, which brings the fatter steel strings very close to the strong magnetic pole pieces. But on the other hand, some degree of warble, which is technically harmonic interference and beating, and it can subjectively make a guitar sound more interesting than it would otherwise. It's like a mild chorus effect. I've never had any of the more popular Bill Lawrence pickups to test, so I don't know much about their magnetic coupling potential, but I know some have a very thin blade. I'd guess the coupling is weaker than with full sized screws and poles. Thanks. I like the both the fattening and brightening aspects of setting pickups closer to the strings. I recently ran into an issue with a ceramic musicman style bass pickup where some interaction with the top string makes the fundamentals disappear. Turns out I'm not the only one: www.talkbass.com/threads/weak-g-string-on-stingray.1320846/Since a lot of people say EMGs solved the issue I'm thinking a bladed pickup could be the ultimate solution. Like the opposite of a focused magnetic field poles produce. Alternatively pairs of poles to the side of the string like Fender basses(did any guitar pickup ever use this?). If my stock pickup wasn't epoxied I'd use it as test bed for Fender style poles vs blades and order the required pickup supplies, just to get an idea what I might like better with other parameters staying equal. I suspect I'll crack the ceramic bar and/or break coil wire if I try.
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Post by antigua on Jul 27, 2022 13:33:17 GMT -5
I don't personally think magnetic pull is a problem unless you measure over 1000 gauss at the pole tops. Even with a large ceramic magnet in a PAF style pickup, it's unusual to get a reading above 500 gauss. In general, if you want the least amount of warble with the highest output, the idea is to have a highly permeable core, like steel, so that the coupling coefficient between the strings and the core will be as high as possible, and then provide just enough of a remnant magnetic field to the circuit to create a magnetic difference when the guitar string moves around. The high coupling between strings and the coil core is what is most important, the magnetic field can be pretty weak and the voltage will still be high enough for most guitarists to be satisfied. The magnet doesn't even have to be under the pickup, as in the case of a HiLo'Tron, you could even put the magnet bedside the coil instead of underneath it, and there have even been some guitar pickup designed that relied solely on the guitar strings themselves having remnant magnetism by rubbing the guitars strings with a magnet periodically, and that design would certainly give you the least amount of "interference" from string pull, since there is no fixed magnet at all, but then again the output is likely very low because the steel strings can't support much remnant magnetism on their own. In this way of thinking, Fender pickups are a bad design because the AlNiCo poles have a low permeability, and therefore a bad coupling coefficient between the strings and the pole pieces, and they have to make up for it with a much stronger remnant magnetic field, A5 poles measure over 1000 gauss at the tops when fully saturated from the factory, and that does cause noticeable string warble with the wound strings when fretting higher up the neck, which brings the fatter steel strings very close to the strong magnetic pole pieces. But on the other hand, some degree of warble, which is technically harmonic interference and beating, and it can subjectively make a guitar sound more interesting than it would otherwise. It's like a mild chorus effect. I've never had any of the more popular Bill Lawrence pickups to test, so I don't know much about their magnetic coupling potential, but I know some have a very thin blade. I'd guess the coupling is weaker than with full sized screws and poles. Thanks. I like the both the fattening and brightening aspects of setting pickups closer to the strings. I recently ran into an issue with a ceramic musicman style bass pickup where some interaction with the top string makes the fundamentals disappear. Turns out I'm not the only one: www.talkbass.com/threads/weak-g-string-on-stingray.1320846/Since a lot of people say EMGs solved the issue I'm thinking a bladed pickup could be the ultimate solution. Like the opposite of a focused magnetic field poles produce. Alternatively pairs of poles to the side of the string like Fender basses(did any guitar pickup ever use this?). If my stock pickup wasn't epoxied I'd use it as test bed for Fender style poles vs blades and order the required pickup supplies, just to get an idea what I might like better with other parameters staying equal. I suspect I'll crack the ceramic bar and/or break coil wire if I try. If the magnetic string pull is strong enough, it will cause the string to vibrate very asymmetrically, then you get bad warble sounds, like "Stratitus". You can induce the effect with a neodymium magnet. If a pickup has strong ceramic pole pieces, it might be especially prone to that. EMG's actually have stronger magnetic fields that PAFs, the idea that they're better in that regard is a myth.
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Post by roadtonever on Jul 27, 2022 14:34:24 GMT -5
EMG's actually have stronger magnetic fields that PAFs, the idea that they're better in that regard is a myth. That's super interesting. Assuming that something else is causing less, or more, unwanted interaction with the strings, what could it be? The width of the sensing area? Different directivity patterns? Also on the stingray basses it's the smaller strings that are the issue. Ny naive thinking is that the smaller mass of the top strings are easier for the magnet to effect. But then I think of how on Strats it's usually low strings that are the issue and that tells me the issue is not intuitive at all to say the least... BTW not quite offset poles on guitar but I reckon it should be similar Looks like a perfect DIY project for a mexi strat set destined for the trash heap.
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Post by antigua on Jul 27, 2022 18:58:16 GMT -5
I should clarify, the gauss at the top of a PAF style with AlNiCo underneath will measure around 250G, and are weaker than EMG 81/85 which have ceramic or AlNiCo bars as it's coil cores, one long "pole piece", and they measure around 350G, but keep in mind there's plastic in between the magnetometer and the magnet, where as PAF pole pieces can be in direct contact with the magnetometer. So that's the myth, simply that EMGs have an unusually weak magnetic field, that's not the case. But, if you have a PAF with a ceramic magnet, or an A8, it can measure close to 450 to 500 Gauss at the pole tops.
It's not really accurate to say that makes it pull harder than an EMG, because one has a plastic cover adding distance, and the other doesn't, it's not apples to apples. If people think they can get an EMG closer to the strings, it might just be because the plastic cover and epoxy is taking up the difference in space, making it seem like the pickup is closer when in reality the magnets and coils are probably about the same distance from the strings, all said and done. An EMG is really just a high impedance PAF style coil arrangement with a little op amp and a couple capacitors under the epoxy. If reduces noise by permitting the run from the pickup to the amp to have a low impedance. If you were to take a vintage PAF pickup and put an op amp under it, it would have a flat response like an "active pickup" also.
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