the ultimate fix for RI wide range humbuckers

[jivetrain]

i have to give EunosFD credit for posting this as well as paulinpac from fender discussion page. this idea came from lindy fralin himself, and effectively cures the wide range pickups from muddiness.

take your pickguard off and completely remove the six hidden polepieces (the three on each side that are beneath the cover and only adjustable from underneath). while the guard is off, adjust the overall height of the pickup itself to be as low as it can safely be at all four adjustment points. replace the pickguard and restring the guitar, then raise the polepieces by a few turns at least.

immediately several things will have happened; the guitar will be much clearer and more detailed in sound than before with a moderate boost in treble, and the bass will no longer be so muddy and vauge. the output will also have dropped, noticeably lowering the volume level. in my case this was a good thing, as i have a 500k pot in the neck and a 250k pot in the bridge. the neck pickup was always overpowering the bridge, and now they're perfectly balanced with each other.

there's not much more to say without getting redundant, basically this mod gets rid of all of the negatives of the wide range humbuckers while retaining all of the positives. the overall character of sound is the same, but improved. i recommend anyone with a WR equipped reissue try this out, especially if you've already done the 500k pot mod; the two mods compliment each other perfectly.



you can read the original source of this mod here

[EasilyAmused]

I tried this out as well after hearing about it. I still have the original 250k pots in mine...

I don't know if I would call it the "ultimate" mod.... it did improve it and after playing around with polepiece heights for a while I was able to get something I liked out of it, but there are still much better sounding pickups out there in other guitars... For $0,though, it seems like a worthwhile thing to do.

[jivetrain]

well, ultimate in that it's the single best improvement you can make in the pickups. personally i love the wide ranges now that i've gotten them sounding this way and they're some of my favorite pickups. i'm surprised people seem so apathetic about them even once they're at their best, but then again i haven't heard too many humbuckers.

[RockinCarl]

When I had my '72 Custom reissue, I put in 1 meg pots for the neck pickup- BIG improvement.

[jefrs]

Let me understand this, you remove six of the magnetic pole pieces. Does this not effectively turn the humbucker into a split single-coil like a P-bass? One 3-pole sc for the bass strings and another under the trebles...

The drop-the-pickup-and-raise-the-polepieces trick works very well with DeArmond 2000's.

[jivetrain]

i think the pickup remains a humbucker because you still have two coils working together, as i understand it the polepieces are just there to direct the magnetic field around the strings so they can be removed without 'deactivating' the coil they're in. someone more knowledgeable about pickups will have to explain exactly what's going on, but from what i've read there's no fundamental change in the pickup other than the inductance and size of the magnetic field.

[jefrs]

It remains humbucking because that's two single coils reverse-wound reverse-magnet but you've lost the field around the strings with the missing poles. There little or no signal from there. You've got a P-bass pup.

[jivetrain]

whatever it is, i like it. there's really no change in the character of the sound other than being cleared up a good bit, so magnetic fields be damned

[jefrs]

If you like it, do it!

It's the sound that matters :-)