A whacky idea for Mandolin/Mandocaster pickups.

[Manolete]

Hello all.

I have purchased a Harley Benton Mandocaster! It is good fun to play, and I'm slowly getting my head around strings tuned to fifths.

However, the pickups leave a wee bit to be desired. They are single coils, but not wired to hum cancel in the middle position...

My whacky idea is to take some bog-basic Artec hotrails and rewire them with the coils in parallel. Thus, they will hum-cancel in all settings but will have a low DC resistance, more in line with other E-Mando pickups I've seen online.

As far as I can tell, Harley Benton/Eastoow/Alden Mandocaster pickups sit on the footprint of a standard Strat single coil (77mm from mounting screw to mounting screw), although I cannot fathom out the pole-piece arrangement or coil size within the pickup.

 

[editorjuno]

Hello all.

I have purchased a Harley Benton Mandocaster! It is good fun to play, and I'm slowly getting my head around strings tuned to fifths.

However, the pickups leave a wee bit to be desired. They are single coils, but not wired to hum cancel in the middle position...

My whacky idea is to take some bog-basic Artec hotrails and rewire them with the coils in parallel. Thus, they will hum-cancel in all settings but will have a low DC resistance, more in line with other E-Mando pickups I've seen online.

As far as I can tell, Harley Benton/Eastoow/Alden Mandocaster pickups sit on the footprint of a standard Strat single coil (77mm from mounting screw to mounting screw), although I cannot fathom out the pole-piece arrangement or coil size within the pickup.

Why not just get a blade pickup that's already low-inductance (which is what wiring the coils in parallel does -- the reduction in DC resistance is just a side effect)? IIRC, Bill Lawrence's L-45S measures somewhere between 1 and 2 henry in inductance, whereas a typical Strat pickup is about double that -- no need to mod it AFAICT.

 

[Derek Kiernan]

Bill Lawrence's L45, in my mind, is perfect for this application. 2H, vs an early 60s' 2.4H (contemporary examples can be much higher), but is more capable of delivering real highs to the amp than that comparison suggests, and perfect clarity without harshness or edginess. You can even use 100k controls instead of 250k and get a more nuanced range of tonal and volume adjustment.

 

[Manolete]

Why not just get a blade pickup that's already low-inductance (which is what wiring the coils in parallel does -- the reduction in DC resistance is just a side effect)? IIRC, Bill Lawrence's L-45S measures somewhere between 1 and 2 henry in inductance, whereas a typical Strat pickup is about double that -- no need to mod it AFAICT.

That does sound good, but I'm working on a tight budget as I'm just about to move. Bill Lawrence stuff always sounds good, and I believe he is a standup guy who believes in his product, and I do hope to purchase his wares at some point in the future.

As for modding the pickup, the only mod would be to desolder the two coiltap wires. This would give me a start and end wire for each coil.

 

[DarnWeight]

However, the pickups leave a wee bit to be desired. They are single coils, but not wired to hum cancel in the middle position...

My whacky idea is to take some bog-basic Artec hotrails and rewire them with the coils in parallel. Thus, they will hum-cancel in all settings but will have a low DC resistance, more in line with other E-Mando pickups I've seen online.

As far as I can tell, Harley Benton/Eastoow/Alden Mandocaster pickups sit on the footprint of a standard Strat single coil (77mm from mounting screw to mounting screw), although I cannot fathom out the pole-piece arrangement or coil size within the pickup.

I have one of the Eastwood tenor guitars, and on another forum I visit there's a thread where someone did exactly that (parallel wiring a strat-sized rail humbucker), with a lot of success. Here's a (link removed) to the thread.

I wouldn't get too hung up on pole-piece alignment either...I replaced the blade pickup in my Eastwood tenor with a covered 65 Mustang RI pickup (basically a low output Strat single coil), and it sounds perfect to me. Brighter with more chime, and a pleasant mid-scooped tone which really complements the tenor. I don't notice any drop-out or dead spots due to poles being misaligned or anything.

 

[Manolete]

I have one of the Eastwood tenor guitars, and on another forum I visit there's a thread where someone did exactly that (parallel wiring a strat-sized rail humbucker), with a lot of success. Here's a (link removed) to the thread.

I wouldn't get too hung up on pole-piece alignment either...I replaced the blade pickup in my Eastwood tenor with a covered 65 Mustang RI pickup (basically a low output Strat single coil), and it sounds perfect to me. Brighter with more chime, and a pleasant mid-scooped tone which really complements the tenor. I don't notice any drop-out or dead spots due to poles being misaligned or anything.

Thanks for the advice and the thread! I've learned a new phrase; "tone lawyer". Nice one!

I've read about other humbuckers in a parallel configuration on other guitar forums. However on the Mandolin forums the guys usually don't bring a lot of 'guitar knowhow' to the table, so they won't talk about pickups as much as we do here, for instance. I've been trying to match the verbal description of parallel-wired pickups in guitars to the verbal descriptions of Mandolin pickup refits.

I guess if a certain string-course is really booming I could file a notch into the pickups' rails?

One thing I found odd about the Mandocaster is that it broke the stock strings as soon as I took them up to concert pitch. The ones that didn't explode were under incredible tension. Moreover the G and D strings were phosphor bronze... what were they thinking? I took two sets of (budget) gauge 9 guitar strings and 'dropped a dress size', using the next lighter gauge of string for each traditional mandolin course. Therefore the E strings were 9, the A strings were 11, the D strings were 24 and the G strings were 32, iirc. I also levelled the frets and dropped the action at the same time. These mandocasters require a neck shim to get the action right down without bottoming out the bridge. Again the Mandolin forum guys never know to actually unbolt a neck and stick in a shim because they never usually encounter Leo Fender-style instruments on their travels...