Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Pickups => Topic started by: mrawlins on June 08, 2010, 08:07:27 AM
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Sorry to post this amongst the undeniably huge Apache fan club but I'm having a few problems with these pickups.
One year ago I replaced the whole pickguard/electronics in my 67 reissue Player's Strat with the full Apache set, hoping for a classier sound for recording. I recently started playing Hendrix covers with a band and the problems I was hearing in the studio are actually exaggerated live (due to greater volume and lack of ability to patch in a compressor or EQ etc.)
The main problem with the sound is that they are so percussive the pick attack is louder than the note. Aso the top E string is about half the volume of the G string. Overall the bass is weak and the sound is quite trebly even on neck pickup. But the percussiveness is what really grates my ear.
Having used many different amps and pedals with the band in rehearsal rooms, I still can't get a good sound out of this guitar. Frankly my '92 Mex Squier strat sounds better and the other members of the band agree.
Now I've read a few posts saying Apaches are quite hot - mine are very weak. The original pickups in the Players Strat were much hotter and also my Squier strat is much hotter (not a problem in itself, but I thought I'd mention it in case it shows a fault).
Can anyone tell me whether they recognise these symptoms?
Cheers all
Martin
BTW I use a Peavey Delta Blues at home and a JCM 900 at the rehearsal studio. The pickups were installed by Vintage and Rare in Bath.
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Can you try them in your Squier Strat to see if it's the guitar at fault? Sometimes some guitars are beyond help :(
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Well the guitar sounded good with the original pickups, I just wanted it to sound great :lol:
I should say this is just with clean sounds, it performs better with a bit of drive.
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In that case, I've no idea! :lol:
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The sounds you describe seems like something is out of phase.
I don't suppose you could post a picture of the wiring could you?
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The sounds you describe seems like something is out of phase.
I don't suppose you could post a picture of the wiring could you?
Indeed, sounds to me as though the installation isn't right - possibly...
Also a difference between the strings could be due to the height of the polepiece (or the height of the strings, or both). BKPs are certainly very sensitive to string-pickup distance (arguably more so than other pickups, if you read posts on these forums...).
Roo
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One of my guitars has (for some reason that I haven't managed to figure out) the middle single coil out of phase with the bridge humbucker and when I use them together the sound is exactly what you describe.
With high gain it's very bright but not too bad, but clean it's like an electric banjo playing through an AM radio in the nextdoor neighbours' garden on a summer evening.
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Hi guys I just got back from rehearsal and it's late now (in Beijing) so I will take and post photos tomorrow.
Thanks for your replies!
Martin
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Hi mrawlins, there is something definitely wrong, I use an Apache neck in my H/S Strat 6 hours a day and know it like the back of my hand. It is not percussive at all, it's very warm, full, deep, and transparently smooth, all this on the bottom end.
If you have the vintage staggered poles, then that could be why you're hearing the E being weaker than the G, for me it's the B that is weak and the G is always too dominate, I'm getting flat profile from now on.
Ya, nothing grating about the Apache, quite the opposite really. The Apaches are not hot, they are a weak PU, they should be sounding very beautiful, open, transparent yet full.
Hopefully you can post up some good pics of the wiring, switch, and pot assembly. If that is a MIM model, the pots & capacitors & output jack are poor quality. . . an upgrade to CTS short shaft 250K pots, switchcraft jack, and good capacitors will improve things, however from what you described there is a bigger problem.
WR
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Hi, I don't recognize the symptoms either- my Apaches are great. Warm and rounded.There must be something wrong though I too don't know what that is.
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Hi, well as I mentioned I bought the pre wired pickguard from Bareknuckle so it includes the CTS pots etc.
Anyway please do have a look at the photos, maybe something wasn't wired up right from the beginning?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34346348@N06/?savedsettings=4684379366#photo4684379366
Sorry, it wouldn't let me put images into the post.
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Hi Martin, those photo's enlarge nicely and all could be seen. The work is beautiful and it's all there and done properly, I'm going to assume you have good ground connection to the claw, the claw is the hardest to ground because the claw's nickel coating must be filed/scr@ped a wee bit where you solder the wire, I don't think this would cause your sonic problems, but worth doing/checking.
Here's my best guess, I notice on the Bridge Baseplate there is a ground going from the pickup's negative terminal to the baseplate. There are arguements to whether this should be done or not, I've read both opinions and you can research the web too. The arguements are some find attaching this wire can cause major noisy problems and might create a ground loop too. I tried a baseplate once and chose not to ground it, I did not have any problems or changes in noise or pickup performance.
Lastly I notice your inner body cavity is not shielded with copper foil or shielding paint. . . I use shielding paint and then a ground wire from the volume pot soldered to a metal tab that is screwed into the shielding paint. This is not necessary but just pointing that out, you do have all the minimum grounding points covered, although and again I can't see the claw's grounding and don't know if the nickel coating was scr@ped away from the wire's contacting solder point.
That's all I can offer from here, I might suggest you take it by Vintage and Rare as it were, unless it gets solved in this thread. Good luck. :)
WR
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Hmmm odd problem, bkps are certainly clearer on the high end than most but not harsh normally.
Can't make it out from the pics but I'll presume you haven't done anything silly as the wiring looks pretty good - they are definitely 250k pots? as higher value pots make the sound a lot brighter and could be resulting in the shrillness you're getting - unless there's a crossed wire somewhere.
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Weird!
What you're describing sounds a little like what happened to my bridge pickup on an Epi LP when the cr@ppy switch died - drop in output, and what got through was significantly thinner sounding than the normal pickup sound (this was Mules). It took me a while to figure out it was the switch - I was sure it was the pickup.
If that sort of effect was applied to a staggered pole strat pickup, I guess the differences in volume between strings would start getting really noticable/unacceptable...
Anyway, I assume the "effect" is on all five switch positions? In other words, it's all pickups that seem naff?
If so, I would first suspect all solder joints in the switch->volume pot->jack socket chain. They look ok, but ... (I am the master of solder joints that look sh1t but are good... everytime I get dodgy joint, it's one of the ones that look ok!). After that I'd be looking at things that can affect all pickups equally - eg the jack-socket itself maybe, and conceivably the switch.
I'm also wondering, what's that dark patch in the photos, in the control cavity, roughly where the volume pot will be sitting when you put the scratchplate back in? I can't figure out what that might be...
I hope you get it sorted - it does not sound at all like what I understand Apaches to be... in fact, I've shied away from them so far because I've always suspected they might be a little too rounded and warm-sounding for my tastes...
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There are a couple of things that I've heard that are consistent with this
Out of phase. Really, really sensitive to motion/touch of the sting, all top end and attack, can be grating sounding and brash
Near-broken connection. You can get it if some wires are just hanging on by a thread or if components (switches and pots) are knackered. Bassless, much less hot, tinny, cold, quiet, all attack, no note.
'Semi-short' if you will; a short thats making light contact, so it kinda doesnt totally short out.
Disconnected pickup, as in at the source, in the pickup. That is very unlikely, but I've had it with one pair of trilogies (something about new solder I seem to recall) a few years ago, and soldered the wire from the wind onto the wire proper again and it sorted it. (I've seen one USA fender where the wind wire and wiring wire were glued in place with solder applied....nowhere near each other!)
And at the extreme, a pickup will still make a sound thats not inconsistent with what you describe if its connected at live or ground, but not the other. Theres still a small signal.
The wiring looks neat with good soldering, so nothings obvious, and I dont know that switch off the top of my head, so I cant say if its all rightly wired, but the rest is fine, and the switch wiring looks about right so I would look to the other components, change them one at a time. If that doesnt work, I'd just touch a soldering iron to the contacts on the bottom of the pickup so it liquifies, and see if that works.
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Thanks a million to all of you for the really superb replies.
Well I'm not sure where to take this now, as I live in China I can't take it back to Vintage & Rare for a checkup any time soon.
For this reason I also can't replace components one by one and I don't feel that confident with a soldering iron anyway but I suppose I could redo a few contacts. The solder joint on the claw looks ok and is certainly well attached to the claw itself.
I can try cutting or desoldering the wire from the bridge pickup baseplate as well but I can't see this making everything ok.
I think first of all I'm going to put the original pickups back in and see what % of this I can attribute to the pickups and how much to the guitar itself. It will take a while as I need to get them sent from the UK but I will post an update when I can.
@ AndyR, the black patch is a barcode ID sealed in wax or varnish.
Thanks again!
Martin
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Just a though, could you post a short clean clip going through the pickup selections. I'm sure the Apache guys would be able tell if that's how they should sound.
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Just a though, could you post a short clean clip going through the pickup selections. I'm sure the Apache guys would be able tell if that's how they should sound.
Yes, here's a clip of the neck pickup which I think shows what I consider an unpleasant attack and also the weak B and top E strings.
The other PU combinations have this too but it's most obvious on the neck.
Actually since my last post I raised all the pickups much closer to the strings which did improve the overall sound and output level quite a lot but these other issues are still there. Here's the chain:
Strat > Peavey Delta Blues (30 watt valve amp, 15" speaker) > AKG C414 6" from grill > LA-610 > RME FF800
Here's the audio: http://soundcloud.com/martin_rawlins/strat-neck-pu-akg-c414
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I see what you mean, I've not owned apaches but it's almost as if when you dig in a bad contact is preventing some of the body of the note to get through. Towards the end it sounds a bit better when you don't hit the strings as hard, from about 20 secs.
My guess would be a bad contact somewhere, a dry joint or damaged wire. Could even be a pot.
You could try wiring the neck pickup directly to the output and see how that sounds, it will be brighter but you should be able to tell the inherent qualities of the pickup.
Might be a bit of messing about but it will really be worth it when you get them working!
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The advice about wiring the pickup straigh to the pot is an excellent one; I'm under the impression that they all sound 'bad', so I doubt the pickups themselves are malfunctioning. It's rore likely something on the other components, maybe volume pot or its connections? The pickups are all connected to the volume pot, I assume.
It's sure annoying to remove and screw on the pickguard lots of times; it's best if you can somehow by a multimeter or otherwise determine that the output from the output jack is what it should be. Maybe someone with more experience on measuring these things could chime in.
-Zaned
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Hmm difficult to put my finger on that but I hear what you mean about the pick attack. I can only think of a compromised joint or as has been said, a faulty pot maybe. Sorry, I am not a lot of help.
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Ok, now we're getting somewhere. We might be able to eliminate both tone pots and the capacitor and the solder/wire connections to the fore-mentioned, why?, because we know the bridge pickup has the same problem and that little sweetie does not run through the tone pots if it's wired traditionally. :) We can elimanate it is the pickups, because it is highly unlikely all three Apaches have the same fault.
We are now narrowed down to the switch, volume pot, jack, and their connections too. Since we know it does it on all 3 pickups we can also eliminate the pickup's ground wires going to the back of the volume pot.
Again this leaves us with the switch, volume pot, jack, and their connections. Now I don't think it's the switch itself, because all 3 pickups do this so the odds of the switch having a weak connection in all 3 (or 5) positions is highly unlikely, and the pickup's hot wire connections to the switch are probably good because the odds of all three hot wires to the switch being weak are highly unlikely.
Here are the connections that need to be checked &/or re-soldered - 1. The hot wire from the switch to the volume pot's outer lug. 2. The hot wire that connects both master hot tabs on the switch itself. 3. The ground wire from the volume pot to the jack. 4. The hot wire from the volume pot's center lug to the jack. 5. The volume pot itself. 6. The jack itself.
I strongly feel it will be solved in one of those 6 steps. Wiring straight to the Jack is a good start, and if you have an extra volume pot, there's no need to install it but wire it straight from the pickup to the pot and then to the jack.
I'm betting strongly this is a faulty volume pot or the jack, the jacks used if it was MIM are junk. If you get a soldering tool, make it a small 25w and use the chisel or flat-head screwdriver tip, liquid flux is your best friend to help the solder flow. You can clean it all up when you're done with q-tips and isopropyl alcohol 90%, and she'll look all pretty when your done.
Using an ohm meter, the Apache's neck should read about 4.5 to 5.0 at the output jack with the tone and volume controls set to max. Good luck. :)
WR
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Wow, ok so you all agree the clip doesn't sound like Apaches should?
It's kind of disappointing to spend close to £200 (over that including postage and installation) on "the best" to find they've not been working properly all along and I need to take a soldering iron to it and troubleshoot all these components as someone who has never soldered before.
I can do it, I'm a man :lol: but being in China makes it impossible to do anything about it if something goes wrong and surely I will destroy any guarantee (is there a guarantee?) or resale possibility.
Of course I defer to your collective and individual greater knowledge that a poor solder contact would suck all the tone out of the guitar, but my laymans gut feeling would be that either it would work or not. The jack may be bad quality but isn't a contact a contact?
Right now I'm more inclined to put the old system back in with it's "poor quality components" (that work) than to tinker with this one... certainly I can't take it back to Vintage and Rare any time soon.
But this knowledge is very, very useful and at least now I know what steps I can take or direct someone else to take for me in the future.
Many thanks.
PS incidentally I ordered a new tremolo block from Callaham a few days ago to try and improve the tone, I could have added a new jack to the order... doh! Actually on reflection I don't think it's the jack as the original pickups sounded fine.
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Would or would not - You can be forgiven for thinking so, I have in the past: I cant hear the clip now, but the first time I encountered a 'partial contact' (wire that was making contact, completing the circuit, but only by a couple of threads) I knew something was wrong because I knew that the pickup worked and what it sounded like. I saw the dodgy contact and pretty much dismissed it: 'Its completing the circuit and we arent dealing with high currents or voltages here, sloppy but should be fine'. So I thought.
I was wrong. I didnt expect it to do anything, but I resoldered it anyway, just to be neat and thorough, and the guitar sounded exactly as it should.
My best guess is you have something similar; maybe a solder join, maybe within a component. I'll check the clip later and see if it sounds like what I heard.
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You could get a 'dummy pot' and some wire and just practice over and over again solder and un-soldering to the lugs, back of pot, and get an understanding and feel for soldering and using flux. You'll have an understanding and feel for it in about an hour or 2.
I have the full Callaham bridge assembly, I'm excellent at soldering, however installing that bridge took much more precision than soldering, you have to precisionly set those 6 fulcrum point screws or the bridge will never perform correctly. Plus, you'll still have to solder that ground wire on the new claw (don't forget about scr@ping/filing the nickle plating at your contact point). However when you're done, that bridge is world class in every way. . . tone, appearance, and function.
You could email whoever built the pickguard assembly, include a link this thread so they can see the pics and the sincerity of your problem. Ship it to them and get it fixed. I should include that even though that jack was fine with your other assembly, it doesn't mean it's not bad now or its connections.
I do feel your frustrations, been there many times myself. This is science, engineering, and humanity. . . even the best fail at times.
WR
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Alright, hearing the clip I dont think its wired out of phase, and its certainly not disconnected at one end, and you should be looking for a duff join or pot/switch, possibly a short.
Wire it straight to jack to find what the 'true' sound of the pickups is by all means, it is a very good idea. Bear in mind that will be quite a lot brighter still than if they were on a load (pots). But if its warmer and bassier like that then you know
A: the pickups are fine
B: theres a problem somewhere in the wiring.
As an outside chance, as it does sound more like a proper guitar than I guessed from description, the setup of the guitar may not be optimal - if the action is very low (I mean very low, a mil or less) or the pickups are very close to the string, that can choke a lot of body out of the sound, and we all just *might* be barking up the wrong tree with the electronics.
So; acoustically, is the guitar thin and tinny, or does it have a decent low end?
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Hi, yes the action was quite low, although acoustically it sounds fine and slightly louder than my Squier.
I raised the action a little bit on the saddles and did a 1/4 turn on the truss rod to give a little more relief in the neck but the "clipping sound" is still quite prominent when I dig in. The action is well over 1mm but I think I need to take the neck off and do a further 1/4 turn as the neck is still probably too straight. If I fret the first fret and the 21st fret the top E won't vibrate in between, it hits the frets. The B and all the other strings do resonate when I do this though.
I've tried different pickup positions and right now I'd say the pole pieces are on average about equidistant between the scratchplate and the strings, so about 4mm from the strings.
I'm also going to install this tremolo block (not bridge replacement just the block) when it arrives and see if it helps with the tone, after that I will try wiring straight to the jack and when my old pickups get here from the UK I'll try to do an A/B recording when I get a chance to swap them over.
See you here again in a few weeks I hope.
Thanks again
Martin
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OK so here's my update.
Having taken off the neck a few times and messed with the truss rod a little, also the claw screws, and adjusted the saddles, and installed the Callaham tone block, raised the neck pickup to where the middle polepiece sits at about 55%, put on new strings and also moved on to a T-Rex Mudhoney - I think I am happy! (except for the mex jumbo frets... grr)
It's amazing what little details can do to the tone of a guitar - not forgetting the amp of course as well. Still not satisfied on that front, and am rather unrealistically jonesing for a Metro plexi. Anyway I'm convinced that there's nothing wrong with the pickups or the beautifully wired BK set.
I have my original Fender wired pick guard but I haven't even tried reinstalling it, I think I was just a little shocked by the comparatively low output of the Apaches, combined with the setup and amp issues.
Thanks again all, this was a most educational thread.
Martin