CR's New ZexCoil strat pups demo

Scott sent over a wired up pickguard with his Vintage set installed. I popped it in my Fender Hellecaster & it sounds awesome! Hope y'all enjoy!
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I listened to your other demo and I mention this a lot, but I thought it would make more sense to comment about this demo since the Fulltone may be filtering out the pickup's high end, anyway. First, the pickups sound warm and sweet with a really solid fundamental (intrinsic to the small coil design). I'm really psyched about Scott's offerings. Definitely worth the money. However, it does sound like the coil cable you use is filtering out all the highs above ~2kHz. Those coil cables tend to be very high capacitance. Due to the design, ZexCoils are fairly high inductance for the voicing as it is. It really sounds like your missing out on the nice articulate upper mids in the 4-5kHz region. It would be worth looking into a a low capacitance cable that would tune the lead pickup to the 4.2-4.5kHz "bell tone" resonance. It's a nice open, yet round sounding range with enough articulation for expressive finger style playing. Once you know the Henry value of the lead pickup, you can use this on-line calculator to determine the cable capacitance for the bell tone: http://www.calculatoredge.com/enggcalc/cap-freq-ind.htm

Let me know if you need any help with that. Again, many distortion devices filter out above ~2kHz anyway, so while you'll get back the sparkle for your clean sounds, it shouldn't really affect your distortion tones. Of course, you can just turn the tone knob down on the Fulltone to compensate.

I understand what you're saying about the coil cables. I did go for a higher-end coil cable, but I understand they can knock a bit of high-end off. I tend to like a little of the highs knocked off. Just personal preference. I'll try it again next week with a few other cables in a clean setting. Monster, Lava, etc. I'll report my findings.
Always open to suggestions, so keep 'em coming.
I'll probably reach out to you offline and talk cables. I'm getting ready to revamp my entire rig from the gtr - pedal-board-amp. Time to clean things up!

Sure thing, Chris. I'd love to hear what those pickups are capable of. From what I know of those coil cables, it's a lot more than a little high end that gets filtered. The old 60's coil cables were about 3000pF capacitance, which would put your lead pickup resonance below 2kHz! Frankly, it sounds like it from the demo. You'll want something in the 200-300pF range to put your lead pickup in the bell tone range. It's best to tune it right in there. A little too high and it can sound a bit brittle with certain sounds. Too low and it can sound a bit nasally. Below that in 3-4kHz is what they call "ice pick" range. Of course, Your results will depend on many factors, like resistance load and guitar/amp/speaker resonances, but 4.2-4.5kHz is a good place to start. You can also tune it above ~6kHz, which virtually eliminates any resonance as far as most guitar speakers are concerned. A 116pF Elixer cable will do that for you. You might find it to lack character in some ways with no resonance in the critical listening range. So, I still say to start with the Bell Tone range. Feel free to PM.

The ZexCoil Vintage II and V are listed as 4.1H inductance. Using the calculator I linked to, a 3000pF coil cable would put it's resonance at 1.4kHz. Nice Claptonesque "Woman" tone, but very limited. Even if that (~30'?) cable were as low as 1000pf, you'd still only have a 2.4kHz resonance. Sounds good for a lot of things, but no "sparkle" to speak of.

Sure thing, Chris. I'd love to hear what those pickups are capable of. From what I know of those coil cables, it's a lot more than a little high end that gets filtered. The old 60's coil cables were about 3000pF capacitance, which would put your lead pickup resonance below 2kHz! Frankly, it sounds like it from the demo. You'll want something in the 200-300pF range to put your lead pickup in the bell tone range. It's best to tune it right in there. A little too high and it can sound a bit brittle with certain sounds. Too low and it can sound a bit nasally. Below that in 3-4kHz is what they call "ice pick" range. Of course, Your results will depend on many factors, like resistance load and guitar/amp/speaker resonances, but 4.2-4.5kHz is a good place to start. You can also tune it above ~6kHz, which virtually eliminates any resonance as far as most guitar speakers are concerned. A 116pF Elixer cable will do that for you. You might find it to lack character in some ways with no resonance in the critical listening range. So, I still say to start with the Bell Tone range. Feel free to PM.

The ZexCoil Vintage II and V are listed as 4.1H inductance. Using the calculator I linked to, a 3000pF coil cable would put it's resonance at 1.4kHz. Nice Claptonesque "Woman" tone, but very limited. Even if that (~30'?) cable were as low as 1000pf, you'd still only have a 2.4kHz resonance. Sounds good for a lot of things, but no "sparkle" to speak of.

The Bullet is a newer cable and does sound much better than the old curly cables of the past. I tried it against my Mogami, Monster & EVH and really couldn't hear much, if any difference. Now of course, I have been playing loud rock 'n roll for 35 years so I'm sure I have at least SOME hearing loss.
I also spoke with the head of Lava cable last weekend at NAMM. We talked a while about curly cables. On gigs, they are perfect for me, but I don't want my tone to suck. We spoke about the differences between Bullet (China) and his cables (USA) and I told him I would try out a full set of his cables. I do love the sparkle when playing clean, but when I crank up some OD I usually go for warm, but articulate mids. I usually roll the highs back a bit especially when using a strat. I don't try & go as dark as Eric Johnson. More Gary Moore. All that being said, what cables are you using? Your hearing is probably in better shape than mine!:mrgreen:

It's not so much the cable brand, or whatever. It's the total C (Capacitance) determined by the pF/foot rating. As long as it is well constructed/shielded, dissipates static correctly and has low handling noise (as most decent cables do), it's only the capacitance that really matters. Anything else that may influence the tone, like phase angle, or noise signature, is so insignificant in comparison to it's total C as to not be concerned with. Don't believe the hype. I use Wilde BL cable/plugs, because they're solid, convenient, cheap and the C is 20pF/foot. To put your 4.1H pickups in the bell tone range, you would need a 13-15' BL cable, assuming the plugs are ~20pF each.

The ZexCoil Vintage II and V are listed as 4.1H inductance. Using the calculator I linked to, a 3000pF coil cable would put it's resonance at 1.4kHz. Nice Claptonesque "Woman" tone, but very limited. Even if that (~30'?) cable were as low as 1000pf, you'd still only have a 2.4kHz resonance. Sounds good for a lot of things, but no "sparkle" to speak of.

That calculator is an oversimplification. It doesn't take the geometry of guitar pickups or the fact that there is mutual inductance between the pole pieces into account, for example.

In addition, even if you are used to interpreting those calculations in the context of conventional singles, mine are going to set up in a different place. My design has six individual coils, and each pole piece is sitting in its own dedicated coil - quite different than a regular pickup, and it sets up in a different place in the resonance/inductance space.

The unloaded resonance of my pickups are typically significantly higher than conventional pickups. For instance, the resonance of my "Vintage" Strat-style pickups (even at around 4 H) is still higher than any conventional Strat-style pickup (typically closer to about 2.5-3 H). So right away you can see there's going to be a huge disconnect.

There's plenty of sparkle there to be gotten!

Hi Scott. I definitely didn't mean to imply that the Zexcoils' may lack sparkle, and I understand that the higher unloaded resonance can translate into more high end, even when loaded down. I was unaware that the design would supersede the normal functioning of an LCR circuit. It's probably because you once jest-fully replied that you can't defy the laws of physics, or something to that affect, when I inquired about it. If it doesn't really work the same, I stand corrected. So, does capacitance load actually set a resonance, and is there a way to determine that?

Wish I had known about your Zepplin tribute performances, I would have loved to have seen them. maybe next time.

Hi Scott. I definitely didn't mean to imply that the Zexcoils' may lack sparkle, and I understand that the higher unloaded resonance can translate into more high end, even when loaded down. I was unaware that the design would supersede the normal functioning of an LCR circuit. It's probably because you once jest-fully replied that you can't defy the laws of physics, or something to that affect, when I inquired about it. If it doesn't really work the same, I stand corrected. So, does capacitance load actually set a resonance, and is there a way to determine that?

Wish I had known about your Zepplin tribute performances, I would have loved to have seen them. maybe next time.

It's doesn't defy the normal functioning of an LCR circuit, it's just a more complicated situation with all of the poles interacting and the fact that a conventional pickup has multiple poles within a single coil, and my design has multiple coils with a single pole in each coil. I stand by my statement that the laws of physics cannot be defied!

Basically all I'm saying is is that because of the design differences you can't compare the L's,f-sub-r's and C's directly, head to head. If I dialed in a pickup with Rdc and L similar to a conventional single, it would have a resonant frequency probably around 15 kHz or so. Certainly if you add more C, f-sub-r is going to go down. As we've discussed offline, I do most (really all) of my quantitative work with unloaded pickups because I really want to see what the pickup itself is doing. You Wilde guys are definitely more "tuned in" to stuff like the effect of cable capacitance than I.

And...there is another Physical Graffiti show at the Queen in Wilmington on Saturday September 29th!

Thanks for the explanation Scott. From what I grasp, the Q factor of the pickup's unloaded resonance will influence the content above the "f-sub-r". That may not be the whole story. Perhaps trying different C -loads and using your ears might be a better tactic.

Oh...Wilmington too far. I thought you were still in Boston. Oh well, good show my good man.