Post Type Archives: SWD

A single coil pickup usually has a single coil wound around a magnet bar or pole pieces. Sometimes a single coil pickup uses ferrous bar or rod pole pieces with a bar magnet fastened to the bottom of a pickup to magnetize the poles. A single coil pickup usually picks up a single harmonic within…

Many times having many strong magnets in a pickup will dampen vibration especially when doing dive-bombs with your tremolo. If your strings become real slack they can stick to your pickup and really reduce sustain. Loose or vibrating bridges or saddles that can move or vibrate when you play and loose bridge components can keep…

There can be variations in the winding and grade of magnet wire, the shape and grade of the magnet material used to conduct a field pattern and to magnetize the strings so when they vibrate produce electrical current to the amplifier, the shape of the bobbin and position to the strings, neck or bridge. Usually…

I found that the stud side actually has more output than the adjustable side on a traditional humbucker. There is a direct connection to the magnet inside the pickup on the stud side and the adjustable pole extends out the bottom of the pickup. There is a slight loss of magnetic field and energy out…

You will notice that steel guitar pickups are generally wound with more turns and higher DC resistance and the bobbins are moved closer to the bridge to retain the treble associated with more turns. Some steel guitar pickups are wound over 10 k Ohms and with the increased turns, you loose the high-end and it…

Bass pickups are wound to respond to the lower notes of a bass instrument. Leo Fender first made a single coil bass that looked similar to a Telecaster bridge pickup for his Precision Bass that was also nicknamed The Telecaster Bass most likely because it had a headstock like a traditional Telecaster. It had 4…

A split pickup is when using a two coil humbucking pickup and one of the coils is shorted out to produce a single coil sound. Splitting out one coil of a humbucker will also make the pickup noisy, less output, brighter and thinner sounding.

Probably 95% can’t. As the epoxy solution is drying, there can be a chemical reaction with plastic parts within the pickup and the epoxy can actually bond with the plastics. The epoxy has a thick viscosity than a hot wax and cannot always fill the fine voids and cavities within the pickup. The epoxy can…

When checking a pickup for performance it is best to use an analog or digital multimeter. I prefer a digital as you can get the exact DC resistance of a pickup you are testing. The DC of a pickup can change depending on the temperature you are testing the pickups. Higher temperatures will give you…

Again this is another reason to remove the strings from your instrument. It keep less pressure off the pickguard and trying to clear it from under the strings that are usually not loose enough to begin with. If you need to remove Stratocaster pickguards often, I would suggest putting a fine piece of masking tape…