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Author Topic: Mixing custom pickups?  (Read 1384 times)

hunter

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Mixing custom pickups?
« on: January 28, 2009, 10:23:08 PM »

Soooo, I read on rigtalk that apparently the hype in the Seymour Duncan community is to mix pickups, i.e. take 1 coil from pickup A and one coil from pickup B to mix a new custom one, maybe very inhomogenic and thus interesting.

I mean is that easily possible to swap coils on humbuckers? I am starting to think about a Holy Diver mixed with a VHII or a Stormy Monday mixed with a BlackDog .... would it work and how?
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Davey

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Re: Mixing custom pickups?
« Reply #1 on: January 28, 2009, 10:55:01 PM »
well.. no.. dont think so

thing with the SD pups is that the coils are virtually symetrical. which is great for canceling hum, but you lose some of the harmonics, which make the pickup sound sweeter and, pretty much better.
so by creating an asymetrical pickup (which you do, with taking two completelly different coils), you get less hum canceling, but also more harmonics and other stuff i forgot (there was a thread about all this on the duncan forum a long while back and i think even MJ stumbeled in to comment on that ... to those who dont know who she is, she's one of the winding gurus at seymour duncan, that does the custom pickups and all that lot and she does know what makes a good pickup. she worked for jackson for a bit and then for fender)
anyway, i dont think that this would work that well with BK's cos they already have asymetrical coils (to some point.. i recall tim mentioning something about this on the board some time back), that are made to work with one another as best as it's possible for the pickup..
BUT, that said, it would be an interesting experiment to see what kind of tones it would produce.