Guitar Pickups What's In a Pickup? Pickup Variety Tone & Timbre Different Positions Combining Pickups What I Use Pickup Summary Guitar Topics Home Page Email GM Arts Guitar Pickups - What I Use In general, I prefer to get a rich sound (meaning a good balance of lows, mids and highs) from most pickups on my guitar, then use EQ to create different sounds.   I also like to use a hotter pickup at the bridge position. Pickups like the Seymour Duncan JB, Gibson 498T, Lace Sensor Red, and many others make it easy to get a hot and creamy overdriven sound.   Their clean sound is mid-boosted and usually a little muffled.   Other mildly hot bridge pickups like the Gibson Classic 57 Plus and Kinman SCn are only hot in the sense that they compensate for the thin sound at the bridge.   These types mix better with other pickups, and produce a more usable sound on their own.

The Strat

I currently use Kinmans on my strat.   If you want vintage-style strat pickups without hum, these are sensational.   They're the only humbucking strat pickups I've heard that sound as rich as the real thing.   Attempts by other manufacturers are close, but you have to replace your guitar pots to keep the highs, and you should really use a guitar preamp if you want to use a stompbox of any kind.   I'm not paid by Kinmans - I paid the normal price for my pickups like anyone else. You might be interested in my previous strat setup.   It had 5 lace sensor pickups, for the most flexible guitar I've ever used!   OK, the sensors aren't a patch on the Kinmans for tone, but playing in a cover band, you need to be able to use strat-like and humbucker sounds, and this setup gives all of that.   It has the 5 typical strat tones, and also a PAF humbucker neck sound, and juicy bridge pickup for overdrive sounds. The setup adds 2 extra Lace Sensor pickups on a strat, giving the appearance of dual pickups in the neck and bridge positions, with a single coil middle pickup.   All 5 pickups are various Fender Lace Sensor models, specifically chosen for their type and position to produce a range of useful sounds with a practical switching arrangement.   The dual pickups are not actually wired in a humbucking (series) connection; instead, the different sensors on their own provide either vintage single coil sounds or thicker humbucking-like sounds. Pickups from bridge to neck are Lace Sensors: Silver, Red, Silver, Blue and Gold.   The extra mini-toggle switch allows a range of standard vintage sounds and thicker humbucking sounds. The traditional strat sounds come from a gold sensor in the neck position, and silver sensors in the middle and bridge positions.   The silver sensors have a little more punch than the vintage gold sound. I use a blue sensor placed beside the neck pickup for a thicker PAF-style sound, and a red sensor beside the bridge pickup.   These sounds are similar to humbucker sounds, but still retain the basic "vibe" of the strat.   The red sensor in the bridge position gives a fuller sound than the silver bridge pickup not only because it is different sensor type, but also because it is further from the bridge.   The neck blue sensor gives a fuller sound because there is even more difference between the blue and gold sounds. The red pickup sounds pretty mean in the new bridge position, although I find its middle-boosted tone masks the natural timbre (character) of the guitar somewhat.   It sounds great with overdrive, and mixes well with the blue neck pickup.   I also like the sound of the blue sensor in this position (a little brighter and clearer, but not quite as fat).

Wiring

In addition to the standard 5-way selector, I have wired my strat with a 3-way mini-toggle which works like a Gibson-style 3 way selector: Neck blue pickup in the up position Standard strat 5-way selector in the middle position Bridge red pickup in the down position Here's the circuit:

Notice that I use 0.01uF treble cut capacitors.   You may prefer to use the more standard higher values (anything from 0.022 up to 0.047), however, I find these values muffle the sound far too much. UPDATE - I modified the above with a special 5-way switch which allows me to replace the middle pickup sound (centre position on the 5-way switch) with neck blue and bridge red together.   This sounds something like a Les Paul with the selector in the centre position.   I haven't drawn this, because these special 5-way switches are difficult to find.

About Lace Sensors

What's good: Weak magnets mean no string pull, no warbling notes, and longer sustain No pole pieces, so you can bend strings without losing level between pole pieces 4 different models, each with its own practical and usable sound Effective shielding, nearly as good as a humbucker for really quiet operation What's different: Soft cardboard-like attack.   Nice for jazz, but needs a bit of overdrive to get them to "chunk" like standard pickups. Sound is not as rich as a standard pickup, but they do have some great clear tones.   The lack of complexity seems to work well with processed sounds. The thing I like least about them has nothing to do with the pickups!   It's the bizarre marketing terms that goes with them.   Here's my interpretation: Radiant Field Barriers = shield Acoustic Sensor = magnetic sensor (try talking into one of them - nothing happens!) Micro Matrix Comb = magnet assembly (spread evenly along the edges of the pickup) Ultra Precision Micro Winding = coil winding Iso Biflux Dual Fields = magnetic fields Frequency Sensitivity = a measurement only (frequency response versus level) Anti-Microphonics, Anti-Static = mounted on rubber grommets Low Energy Particle Magnets = weak magnets I encourage you to make up your own mind on these.   Try them out for yourself at your local music shop.

The Dual Humbucker

I use a Gibson Alnico V pickups: 490R in the neck position and a 498T in the bridge position.   This combination is common on many of Gibson's Les Paul models. I have replaced 2 of the controls with 2-position mini toggles to give effectively 11 different & useful sounds.   The mini-toggle switches change the sounds available on the standard 3-position pickup selector.   The remaining 2 controls are master volume and master tone ('coz that's the way, I like it, uh huh uh huh ...). Mini-toggle #1 selects humbucking / single-coil sounds Mini-toggle #2 is 'normal' / 'variation' With toggle #2 set to 'normal', toggle #1 selects: Standard humbucking sound (the pickup coils connected in series) Single coil sound (the pickup coils connected in parallel) Both of these are actually humbucking (in the sense that they don't pick up interference), but I've labelled them humbucking and single-coil because players recognise these sounds. With toggle #2 set to 'variation', toggle #1 gives: Humbucking sounds with the pickup centre taps connected to each other.   This is unusual (I've never seen it done before so I'll call it the GM Arts sound), and gives a sound halfway between the normal sound of the pickup, and the sound of both together.   It's useful because it retains the normal humbucking volume, and brings the sounds of the two pickups closer to each other. True single coil sound - just a single coil in each pickup, which of course, is not humbucking.   This is similar to the 'normal' single-coil sound above; just a little less 'strat quack'.   I've designed it to use the bridge coil furthest from the bridge to give the fullest possible bridge sound; the neck pickup coil is arbitrary. Even though there are technically 12 different sounds, normal/variation has no effect in one case (both pickups together in humbucking mode).   Many other sounds are similar, but there's a lot more useable variety here than the standard 3 sounds. Here's the wiring diagram:

Guitar Pickups
What's In a Pickup?
Pickup Variety
Tone & Timbre
Different Positions
Combining Pickups
What I Use
Pickup Summary
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