Took delivery of my calibrated set of Stromy Monday humbuckers today and immediately took the afternoon off to install them. And with it being the first time I'd ever tackled a pickup transplant is an ES, I flipping well needed the whole afternoon too. :roll: You don't know the meaning of balls ache until you've not installed pickups in a semi acoustic with no back plate!! It would ultimately prove more than worth it! :D
The installation started with a bit of a scare. I'd ordered a set with 52mm spacing on the neck pickup - with hindsight 50mm would've been better but that's not really the issue - and anyway, a set turned up with one pickup with the pole pieces with 52mm spacing and the other pickup, of course, had 50mm spacing. However, a closer look revealed that the pickup with the 52mm spacing was marked "neck" and the other marked bridge. I kept calm and decided it was much more likely that Tim, or whoever wound and packaged the pickups, had made the mistake when labelling the pickups rather than whilst actually winding them and attaching the cover. I don't have a multimeter so I pressed on and just installed the pickups according to the pole piece spacing, i.e. presuming the 52mm spacing was for the brdige position and 50 mm for the neck.
4 hours later - having left cables on the outside of the guitar that should have been on the inside, broken solder joints by stuffing the pots through the cavity in the sustain block and basically having to install the pickups 3 times - I had got the little blighters in.
It seems I was right to press on. The pickups were measured at 7.4k and 8.0k ohm and after I'd got them set up, they sounded great as they were. There isn't much of a noticeable difference but if there is a difference in output, the pickup I have in the bridge position (marked "neck") is the louder of the two. And the whole setup just sounds too good to be "wrong".
I have a bad back from bending over that bloody F-hole, fishing around trying to stick pots and swicthes through holes but hearing the difference the Stormy Mondays make made the pain all worth while.
Even had time for a quick clip.
The clean track is the guitar played with the selector switch in the middle position and both pickups set to volume 10 & tone 10. The slightly driven lead track is just the bridge pickup.
All recorded through my 5 watt Ibanez Valbee using a cheapo condenser microphone (which is actually quite decent for vocals and quieter amp recordings). I added a little reverb on the recorder but otherwise it's the pure "naked" sound of guitar, amp and BKPs.
Here's the clip ...
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=532103&songID=4573357I used to have all my humbucker with a coil-split so I could switch one pickup to single coil mode and get rid of some of that muddiness ....
... I now have Bare Knuckle pickups!
