Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Pickups => Topic started by: FELINEGUITARS on September 06, 2005, 07:59:28 PM
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After listening to Tim for a long while and discusssing the merits and downsides of a lot of the Distortion and hi gain pickups that I have played over the years (and Tim has too ), and getting to understand that they often were wound with a wire with a solderable ploy/nylon insulation, I pondered upon whether it was part of the sound of a lot of the players that I have liked
Polysol coated wire does have a distinctive and some would say nasty upper midrange spike and yields a sound that is not as organic sounding in many ways. It is the reason that so many single coils wound with it sound so "scratchy" and hard on the ears (I much prefer the formvar or plain enamel coated stuff that BKP use on their single coils). But a lot of pickups I have used and some of my heros have used have been wound with that wire and some of those pickups seemed to have that "aunch" as so many players refer to.
So I decided to ask Tim to indulge my curiosity and wind me a pickup with that 44 gauge polysol , but to scatterwind the coils to give that special something that we are learning to appreciate from BKPs. ANd sure enough I got that pickup- based on a distortion type humbucker with a DC of about 16k - wound with 44 gauge Polysol wire. I had been keen to test it against both a Miracle Man and also a Cold Sweat. It has beeen a fun couple of weeks since then and I really love the pickup - although not sure if i actually prefer it to the Miracle Man- it's just a little different and has a little more "aunch" , sounds a little more synthetic and I kind of like that in a George Lynch meets Queensryche kind of way.
It's only been in a Les Paul so far and it would be good to test it in a superstrat of some kind. I'll post my opinions as they unfold and develop.
Really I just wanted to say thanks to Tim for indulging my curiosity.
Once again it shows how cool and helpful he is
Cheers! :P
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sounds cool! any chance of any soundclips? :)
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That would be a good idea
I have never recorded before and wonder what i would need to get it all into my Mac. (then you could all hear my badly played Dokken riffs).
I will ask Ben or Johnny Mac for some tips on a simple setup to do that (or anyone else who has a good idea for that)
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You'll need some recording software for your mac - I'm pretty sure you can get cubase but that might be a bit extravagant for what you need. Other than that I don't know whether there's as much free software available as there is for PCs.
The only other things I use with my PC is a decent mike and the mixing section of an old fostex four track. Seems to work well enough that I'm considering doing my band's next demo at home (feels like the early 80's again!)
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you can download audacity for free, legally. just google it. I'm not certain if there is a mac version though, but i think there might be.
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you can download audacity for free, legally. just google it. I'm not certain if there is a mac version though, but i think there might be.
I am pretty sure there is, I know there's one for linux so there should be.
Audacity is a very cool program, and free.
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:D Hi Johnathon/ Tim is it the 44 polysol you use on the VHII ?
:D 8)
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:D Hi Johnathon/ Tim is it the 44 polysol you use on the VHII ?
:D 8)
:o you can't ask Tim to give away his trade secrets!
...the dimarzio spies are everywhere, lurking in the dark chasms of the internet, snooping for peoples ideas to trademark....
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:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
the VHII is 42 AWG plain enamel..........I'm not precious about that.
Within reason you can pretty much tell what wire has been used on a humbucker by the DC res and coil size.
I wind predominantly with plain enamel on humbuckers, the exceptions are the high gainers like Miracle Man and Warpig which are a polysol.Strats are Formvar or plain enamel and Teles plain enamel.There are no secrets as far as I'm concerned just alot of patience and attention to detail.People that hide behind secrets or 'mojo' normally don't know anything in my experience.
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No - it's plain enamel - as it should be .
the old Gibbo pickups were all plain enamel and the switch to polysol is part of the reason they dont sound like they used to
A lot of the reason behind a lot of the authentic tones that Tim has achieved with BKP is going back to the old wire type that the old companies used to use as well as his careful handwind with the scattering of the coil windings.
Add into the mix his obsessive quest for accurately made parts (even to the extent of making his own baseplates, own covers , sourcing screw types that haven't been used for years and hook up wire that has been out of production for ages till Tim got them to remake it like the old stuff) and you start to see why his pickups have a tone that is to die for.
Where other companies have used polysol for vintage spec pickups they have suffered with a tone that just didn't sound like the old ones did, so by using the right stuff you get a chance to get the pickups sounding vintage.
There are cases where Polysol is the only type of wire available in a certain wire gauge - so you have no choice and you design a wind that works to bring out the best characteristics of that wire and work around any potential quirks.
And there are times like in the case with what I had made where I am trying to recreate a sound where the quirks or shortcomings of the wire type are part of the sound- I just wanted it wound with care and attention to detail- which is what I got
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My head is about to explode with all that info. I'd love to hear the thing in action.
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Once you can grasp the pebble from my hand, you'll have understood it all Ratty :lol:
Seriously though, it all sounds much more complicated than it really is.Making pickups isn't difficult, perseverance and patience is!At the end of the day it's the tone that matters....how you get there is by the by so long as the results are accurate, consistant and reliable.
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Seriously though, it all sounds much more complicated than it really is.Making pickups isn't difficult, perseverance and patience is!At the end of the day it's the tone that matters....how you get there is by the by so long as the results are accurate, consistant and reliable.
It is much like anything else that you strive to excel at .
It could be nailing the perfect riff or lick or dialing in the ultimate tone on an amp
Or perfecting a method of refretting a guitar....
It all takes practice, perseverance , more practice and reflecting and modifying what you do when it doesn't go how you thought it might.
It becomes a cumulative effect if you follow a careful path and in time you master more and more skills relating to what you are practicing.
Learning to respond to feedback (either from others or from your own critical eye/ear is an important part of the learning curve)
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I have a BC Rich pickup lying around. I'll rip it apart and see what makes it tick.
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Well - I just did something different tonight and swapped out the Cold Sweat Neck and experimental Distortion pickup out and replaced them with a pair of Mules - Alnico IV and 42 gauge plain enamel.
I have to say that the guitar is so much more tuneful, although lacking the drive for my Dokken and John Sykes version of Whitesnake riffs.
Never underestimate the Mule as a great all round rock pickup.
i still love the 44 polysol , but want to put it in my maple bodied gunslinger and try it out there, but for now the Les Paul sounds like a real Les Paul again
(and I don't think I'll change her again now)
And Tim did me the nicest set of Reverse Zebra Coils I have yet seen
This is how she looks now:
(http://felineguitars.com/news/images/sunburst-lion-full-front.jpg)
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And Tim did me the nicest set of Reverse Zebra Coils I have yet seen
Hi Jonathan, I thought the BKP reverse had black stud/cream screws? I know SD do it the other way.
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I thought that too - they do things different in Devon you see......
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And Tim did me the nicest set of Reverse Zebra Coils I have yet seen
Hi Jonathan, I thought the BKP reverse had black stud/cream screws? I know SD do it the other way.
Phil you are right - BKP have done it the other way round and the reason for that is simple - it was the way that Gibson did it .
So BKP had the colours the correct way but Tim is pondering changing the designation the other way around - much to his dislike simply because players are so used to the "wrong way" that Duncan and Dimarzio have always done it that they end up ordering the wrong way round because of what they are used to.
I totally understand his frustration as his way was historically correct, but people are so used to the wrong way round that it is almost easier to follow that convention :evil:
Any- I just love how these pickups look and sound.
I still love the Cold Sweats and the "Distortion" but am just having fun with the Mules.
It's as good as they sounded in he Explorer I made Tim- that was fun to play!!
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Check out the online store, that has examples of what is zebra and reverse zebra, so there won't be any more confusion.
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Sometimes holding back the tide is too much hard work :lol: and you have to fall in line. The SD colour code is so widely used that I'd really be facing an uphill struggle trying to get everyone to think the other way round. the positive thing is we can and do offer both types of zebra as well as double cream and double white too.
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About the polysol, Tim, do you think it's the quality of the wire itself or perhaps the thickness of the insulation that produces the tonal differences, or is it the dielectric properties of the polysol?