Covered or not (the difference)

[giboovhull]

Hi again,simple quezzie to you all, what difference does having pups covered make in the overall sound,is it subtle or is it very noticeable ,thanks. :?

[Doadman]

There are a few threads on this. There is a difference as a cover tends to round out the notes a bit but it's minimal, especially as Tim tweaks the wind a bit to compensate for the effect of a cover.

[ShredHeadJHJ]

I heard that it makes the pups brighter, but I have also heard people refute this. I have also heard that it gives a slight sound of a bit lower output when pups are covered.

[Telerocker]

I understood the covers take away a little bit of highend.

[Twinfan]

I've found covers to smooth the tone out a little and really quieten the pickups down.  WIthout covers, I find there's more presence and much more noise - handling noise, string scratches and interference/buzzing.

To me they feel more lively to play through, but the noise/interference is very noticebale.

[gwEm]

Tim adjusts the wind, so its hard to say. But Dave is spot on here I think, based on my experimentation with a set of old T-Tops. The other thing is without the covers you can adjust the pickups closer to the strings and get more output.

[PhilKing]

I'm old enough to remember why we pulled the covers from humbuckers.  In fact my first set of Bare Knuckles were covered with a set of original 63 Gibson covers from a 335.  We took the covers off to get more punch from the pickups.  I think this occurred for 2 reasons.  One is that we opened up the slug coils, and the other was we lowered the screws to be flush with the screw coil and raised the pickups a couple of millimeters.  Both of these together gave that boost.  In BK's case, Tim compensates somewhat for the cover, which reduces the difference, but as Dave and gwEm both say, the covered pickups still sound a little sweeter.

[Twinfan]

I find the biggest difference is the extraneous noise of open pickups, it's really quite noticeable.

[St.James]

 8)

[Twinfan]

A correction:

Original PAFs from the 50s are NOT wax potted.  Never were.  Any that are now were potted later in their life.

[gwEm]

A correction:

Original PAFs from the 50s are NOT wax potted.  Never were.  Any that are now were potted later in their life.

thats true, T-Tops and Dirty Fingers were also not wax potted. In fact, as far as I am aware except for some experiments with epoxy potting it was until the late 80s when they started it properly.

[St.James]

 8)

[St.James]

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[giboovhull]

Nice response,thanks ,so would you say then that the covers are in a way a mild noisegate,ironing out a bit of string catching etc....when played.So without covers a tad more raw.

[St.James]

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