unorthodox pickup slant

Hitler said something to the effect that if a lie is told loud enough and long enough, it would eventually be accepted as truth. How many so called established mindsets, whether truth or deception, or unchallenged, are we operating under in every realm of life? Thinking I had literally exhausted all remedies for an icepicky tele bridge pup, I recently went back to a possibility my mind had always previously and instantly rejected and put the slant downward on the treble side of the bridge pup and the bass side up. At first I radically lowered the treble side and almost completely lost my high E string. I then raised it up one whole(yes, not "the established" 1/4 inch turn; I don't know any pickup or ear that sensitive) screw turn. That was not enough and went one more full turn and that did it. The treble side is now about 3/8" lower than the bass side. The bass side now has more rounded "Nashville" pop and the B and E strings are balanced but not as icepicky as before. How unorthodox of me! My tele won't make it in the glossy catalogs, mags and ads with all the others and their nice photogenic symmetrical slanted bass side pups,but it's how my guitar sounds, over it's looks, that gives me confidence in my playing. Whatever pups that might fit the "status quo", this about face seems to favor vintage styled low output tele bridge pickups. Okay, I'm ready, let me have it!!

Be happy that you can adjust that much - if I lower the bridge pickup like that on my sixties tele the bridge will fall off the screws. Longer screws really won't fit in.

I personally don't care what my guitars look like as long as they work well with a live band.

Am always ready to adjust anything required to get the job done and don't follow the crowd.

Yeah, it's a different sound, first exploited by Hendrix. The bass side is brighter, and the treble smoother. Two things: Your treble side is 3/8" lower than the bass side? That's an awful lot. Also, how much height difference you can hear depends on many factors like pickup voicing and phase coherency, magnetic field strength, upper mid/high end content in the signal being monitored, accuracy of monitoring environment, and ear training level. I've perceived less than 1/10th of a screw turn in certain scenarios. It becomes particularly evident when combining pickups. Most all people would hear it under the right conditions.

Hitler said something to the effect that if a lie is told loud enough and long enough, it would eventually be accepted as truth. How many so called established mindsets, whether truth or deception, or unchallenged, are we operating under in every realm of life? Thinking I had literally exhausted all remedies for an icepicky tele bridge pup, I recently went back to a possibility my mind had always previously and instantly rejected and put the slant downward on the treble side of the bridge pup and the bass side up. At first I radically lowered the treble side and almost completely lost my high E string. I then raised it up one whole(yes, not "the established" 1/4 inch turn; I don't know any pickup or ear that sensitive) screw turn. That was not enough and went one more full turn and that did it. The treble side is now about 3/8" lower than the bass side. The bass side now has more rounded "Nashville" pop and the B and E strings are balanced but not as icepicky as before. How unorthodox of me! My tele won't make it in the glossy catalogs, mags and ads with all the others and their nice photogenic symmetrical slanted bass side pups,but it's how my guitar sounds, over it's looks, that gives me confidence in my playing. Whatever pups that might fit the "status quo", this about face seems to favor vintage styled low output tele bridge pickups. Okay, I'm ready, let me have it!!

Good find!! It seems most of what we "think" makes a difference does very little, if anything. My nephew who is a bass player, and one of his engineering professors at Georgia Tech, a guitarist, replicated an experiment. They replaced the caps in various guitars with the same value cap but different manufacturers. Everything from the .99 green things from Radio Shack to more expensive paper in oil hi-fi type caps. They graphed each and overlaid the graphs and they were exactly the same and the audible differences were nil. Instead of a bunch of thin lines it looked like a line drawn with a sharpie. They only measurable differences were with caps that were hi and low on the tolerances.

I have a friend who builds amps in Gainsville Ga had a guy wanted an amp built and swore he could hear component differences (resistors and caps). Just for fun he built an identical amp with "Cheap" components, had the guy play it and he loved it. When he told the guy it was the cheaper component amp the guy stormed off and refused to buy the amp with the more expensive components. Lots of Voodoo here.

That's a great point and I'm totally with you on the component thing. It's only the value of the component that matters. It's function in the circuit is too basic for anything else to matter. However, defective caps with resistance leakage will alter tone, as can proximity of components to others, or wires, etc. Even so, the analogy doesn't really apply to the pickup slant, or height argument. I have two SC's in a former HB bridge space on a guitar. You can definitely tell that the orientation matters. The bass side on the SC next to the bridge sounds very metallic like Hendrix's guitars, and the treble side on the other SC is smoother and richer than a slanted mount would be. It's pretty obvious. Also, the closer a pickup is to the string, the more slight height adjustments will matter. As I said, in the right circumstances, anyone with good ears can tell the difference of ~1/8th a screw turn at the optimal pickup height with a clear sounding pickup with it's resonance tuned above ~4kHz. It's not voodoo, it just depends on the factors I mentioned.

However, defective caps with resistance leakage will alter tone, as can proximity of components to others, or wires, etc.

You repeat this often and I don't know where you get it from. How much resistance changes the function and how many examples of caps have you run into that measure that way?

Not from me. From the research of an IEEE in the "Analysis and Conclusions" section on this page:
http://www.aqdi.com/tonecap.htm
That was where I confused the issue about cap reactance, which I was wrong about. He also mentions how foil caps can affect unshielded circuits, which makes sense. Guitar amp designers claim to use component proximities for reactive effects. I don't know how it's done, but it makes sense since real things don't always act in accordance with established theory. Those factors are different than the unrepeatable, unfounded affects others have claimed about cap materials. I guess I'm taking it on faith, but his tests are pretty extensive. Best I've seen.

Not from me. From the research of an IEEE in the "Analysis and Conclusions" section on this page:
http://www.aqdi.com/tonecap.htm
That was where I confused the issue about cap reactance, which I was wrong about. He also mentions how foil caps can affect unshielded circuits, which makes sense. Guitar amp designers claim to use component proximities for reactive effects. I don't know how it's done, but it makes sense since real things don't always act in accordance with established theory. Those factors are different than the unrepeatable, unfounded affects others have claimed about cap materials. I guess I'm taking it on faith, but his tests are pretty extensive. Best I've seen.

I've never heard of an IEEE besides the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which is a standards body. If this leakage phenomenon was so important to how they demonstrate tonal difference, why is the resistance not a variable in the data? They said they only ran across one such example, as well. "The sound clips were created as on our pickup test page, by filtering a stock sound clip using the curves you see below. This is MUCH more accurate for comparisons than strumming a guitar due to the variations in playing and player digestion." I'm guessing this means, in other words, they came up with the "curves" based on how they measured frequency response and added it as EQ to the sound sample. They weren't testing the "sound" of the capacitors in a guitar circuit at all, unless you already accept it's effectively the same as EQ. There's no "leakage" that they count as a variable. The only thing of any relevance is "actual value".

It's only an acceptable if you already believe capacitors don't have a sound, so it's not useful as an article that "proves it".

The only thing they try to add to the discussion over standard calculations is "leakage", which has nothing to do with what they did. They also mention the effects in amp power sections, which is a high-voltage application and absolutely distinct from what's happening in a guitar circuit. There are many clues they're not both credible authors on the subject of guitar electronics, such as "Fixing Fender SCN Pickups," in which one decided his SCNs sounded awful because he measured the SCNs at "10.6K" while his Strat singles measured "6.5K", or in his words, "that's about 40% too much wire, inductance and resistance". He's not as sophisticated in his knowledge about these topics as many of the forum members here, and absolutely not a reference.

Interaction between components positioned and oriented improperly is real and based in physics, not magic music mojo, whether or not these builders know what they're doing. Ignorance has nothing to do with not being within established theory. It's better to learn the physics and do the math than accept on blind faith or "design" haphazardly.

I have a friend who builds amps in Gainsville Ga had a guy wanted an amp built and swore he could hear component differences (resistors and caps). Just for fun he built an identical amp with "Cheap" components, had the guy play it and he loved it. When he told the guy it was the cheaper component amp the guy stormed off and refused to buy the amp with the more expensive components. Lots of Voodoo here.

As long as everything is in spec! In high-voltage applications like amplifiers, it's very important to have a capacitor rated for it. I wonder if any major companies are not using properly rated caps?



B.J.TELE - Did you spend much time playing with your amp's tone stack?

Derek, there is some faction of people in these types of forums who refer to those with an engineering degree as an "IEEE". I'm not an academic, so I don't know all the specifics. There are certainly people with more sophistication in certain areas, but I have yet to see a better test done with caps. Unless you can link to one, that's the one I'll refer to. Don't use it as a reference if you don't want to. Apparently, the leakage is akin to wiring a resistor in parallel. He didn't bother testing the example, but rather disposed of it. It is possible that examples of old paper in oil caps that people claim sound different may just have high leakage, is it not? Too bad his defective example wasn't included in the test. The graphs might have revealed something interesting.

I'm not claiming that the interactions of actual physical components is due to "mojo" -- only that, like prescribing medications for "mental illness", there may be too many variables to come up with a consistent theory to predict results, when many components in proximity are involved inside an amplifier. Much experimentation may be required. Certainly, learning theory is invaluable. I don't understand why you'd insinuate that I don't think it is?

I agree about his reaction to the bridge SCN. He was comparing it to another standard, and not to what the pickup was was designed for. Yeah, he doesn't know everything, but he makes some great points about the myths surrounding components, and he has a good sense of humor about it, rather than a pompous, cold and judgmental style in his criticisms.

We've wavered off topic here, so I'll leave it at that. I'm still curious to hear if the OP's pickup is actually 3/8" lower on the treble side, or if that's a typo. I've dropped the treble side of a few pickups maybe 0.5mm lower than the bass side in the bridge. Although I like the tone on the high E, I'm not sure the volume really matches. Maybe I'll make some adjustments, whatever.

I like my pickups lower than some, but on all the guitars I have it's more difficult to keep the bass from overpowering the treble than the other way around. I like the clear, clean highs, but if I adjusted any of my guitars like you have done, I wouldn't be able to hear the treble strings. Sure as rain though, I'm now gonna have to fiddle with at least one of 'em again. Damn your evil hide Moriarty!:idea::cool::mrgreen:

rout out a strat body's pup cavities to swimming pool configuration, float a single strat pup and near inifinitely vary it's relationship to the strings for height and location. that's an ear and eye opener.

Derek:

Good thought, but yes, I twiddled and fiddled the paint right off them tone stack knobs! To make a long story short, on all my amps, I ended up with treble at 0; mids about 3:00 o'clock; bass at one of two settings which are 10:00 o'clock and 2:00 o'clock. To be truthful, I now absolutely refuse to play a tele through anything but my old Fender 72' Bassman Ten 4-10 combo. I don't know what it is, the 4-10 configuration or what, but it gives me the closest thing to a Paisley-Mason-Nashville tone I've ever had. That Bassman was, but, is now no longer for sale!

Sorry guys, but 3/8" on the treble side was incorrect..closer to 3/16ths and a tad.