All stacked tele humbuckers are horrible! Am I wrong?

[Fred Rogers]

I'm looking to put a stacked humbucker into one of my teles, but I've had bad luck in the past. No matter the brand, I find they just don't sound like a full humbucker. They are either too hot or too muddy sounding. The last one I tried was a Lil 59 and it was just too dark. Perhaps I need to change my pots to 500k? Anyone find one they like that can hang with a full-sized humbucker?

 

[dan1952]

No. Actually the best I've heard were EMGs,and i HATE 9v batteries.

 

[RottenTheCat]

Part of the humbucker tone, its charm if you wanna call it that, is the horizontally distributed coils and magnetic circuit. When the coils are stacked, and the magnetics are focused, you're not gonna get the same timbre.

 

[Tele-phone man]

Most stacked humbuckers are designed with the goal of sounding like a single-coil. If what you crave is the sound of a full-sized humbucker, why not change out your bridge for one designed to use a full-sized humbucker?

 

[PeterUK]

I was discussing this with a friend a few weeks ago and he’s making pick ups for one of the big manufacturers for their high-end guitars.

He’d also discussed this at length with the late and great Bill Lawrence and both Bill and he agreed that using the traditional Fender steel bridge plate was detrimental to this type of pick up.

He showed me an experiment which showed how a steel bridge plate would mess with the performance of the pick up, and if to gain the correct pick up height you had one half of the stack below the pick up and part of the upper stack half-and-half, the pick up was inhibited from performing it’s designed task.

They both concluded a non-ferrous bridge was the way to go. The visual experiment illustrated it perfectly but I fear I’ve explained it poorly and inaccurately.

I’ve got a SD BG1400 and I’ve deliberately chosen this as part of a Bigsby B16 Esquirecaster and I’m hoping to heat the BH1400 for how it was designed.

Once it’s assembled I’ll report back.

Peter

 

[Dacious]

A is A and B is B. You can make A a little B-ish, or B a little A-ish. But silk purse \= sows ear or vice versa.

To make a dark pickup lighter higher value volume pots assist, as does dropping from say .047 to .033 or .033 to .022.

Consider a TBX tone control - 1 meg for top end, plus 250K for neck by itself or combined presuming one vol and tone control. I had one in my PRS with coil splitting and it made for versatility.

 

[Tommy Biggs]

I'm looking to put a stacked humbucker into one of my teles, but I've had bad luck in the past. No matter the brand, I find they just don't sound like a full humbucker. They are either too hot or too muddy sounding. The last one I tried was a Lil 59 and it was just too dark. Perhaps I need to change my pots to 500k? Anyone find one they like that can hang with a full-sized humbucker?

I agree with @Tele-phone man that most of the Stack HBs are not going for a full HB sound.
I will say that I have a lil’ 59 in a Strat, and it’s really bright. The 500k pot may be a good idea.

Finally, a blade can be hotter and more metal appropriate to my ears.

 

[bender66]

I would expect to bump up the pot value if I added a stacked HB to my guitar.

 

[Dunkerhook]

My Duncan stacks sound good but they are Strat and tele pickups that are stacked for noise reduction. They don’t want to be humbuckers; the folks at Duncan have spent almost 40 years reassuring us that stacks will fix — and not harm our Fender style guitars.

If you want to add Gibson-ish tone to your tele , they’d point to rails and little 59 and little jb. I really like hot rails — full on and tapped. They do the humbucker thing well. I agree with others; try a different pot or cap if you haven’t had good luck with any of those.

Some Dimarzio rails are great single-coil-sized humbuckers. For high gain amps, my favorites are chopper t and a pro track (Strat-sized) in the neck.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[urbandefault]

I have T style guitars with traditional singles, humbuckers, stacks, you name it. They all sound different and do variations of the same thing, which is sound like T style guitar.

But recently I stumbled on a combination that I probably will never duplicate, just because of the combination of parts. It's a heavy ash body with a cheap Asian neck, a MIM standard bridge, $16 vintage style tuners, a Bootstrap Palo Duro bridge pickup with no switch, one volume and one tone.

I can roll the tone back and kick on a Tube Screamer and get right on the edge of LP territory. I'm serious. I try the same settings with other T style guitars and it's just not the same.

So to answer the question, no. Stacks aren't horrible. No pickups are really "horrible." You just have to find where they belong.

 

[jvin248]

.

If you go from single to humbucker you'll want to go from 250k to 500k. It's also important to evaluate actual measured kohms as the spec is 20% range and matters just the same as jumping target kohms.

Several of the favorite brands of pickups I find way too muddy. Some of the cheap ebay imports have about half the internal capacitance (from bobbin winding technique) and are less prone to muddiness.

You can reduce muddiness by putting a capacitor in series with a muddy pickup, if the volume pot trick didn't work.

.

 

[Mincer]

Stacked Duncans are not supposed to sound like humbuckers. They sound like slightly thicker singles without the hum, which is how they were designed.

 

[jrblue]

Well, they're humbuckers, so I guess they suck at being single coils. Why one earth would you use them if you don't want humbucker performance?

 

[Lobomov]

sounds like taking the ones you find muddy sounding and changing the pots to 500k might work for you

 

[Golem]

I know Jeff Buckley would disagree:

That's a hot stack in the bridge.

 

[radiocaster]

I'm looking to put a stacked humbucker into one of my teles, but I've had bad luck in the past. No matter the brand, I find they just don't sound like a full humbucker. They are either too hot or too muddy sounding. The last one I tried was a Lil 59 and it was just too dark. Perhaps I need to change my pots to 500k? Anyone find one they like that can hang with a full-sized humbucker?

Lil 59 is not a stacked humbucker, although it may help to change the pots.

 

[Golem]

I kind of like these as well:




Both are stacked designs as well although Kinman does some other stuff to reduce noise that people have claimed is snake oil. I will say that they are noiseless and do sound quite good.

 

[rangercaster]

In my experience, rail designs work really well ...

 

[Doctorx33]

Why does it have to be stacked? The DiMarzio Chopper T and Super Distortion are side by side coils and both sound terrific. I have one of each in two of my Teles and both sound great, I like to rock out. Ritchie Kotzen uses the Chopper T, go give a listen to the Winery Dogs.

Pickup height and left/right adjustment is critical and it took some time to get them right but I recommend them both.

 

[refin]

I have a DiMarzio Virtual Vintage that has a nice top end,as well as another DiMarzio stacked model that I emabarrassingly cannot remember the model.Also have EMGs in a tele that sound terrific (didn't like the strat models,but these sound great).
There are good stacked tele pups out there---its hard to tell that the ones I have are noiseless.


Here is the Virtual Vintage in a feeble attempt at country...…
https://www.soundclick.com/html5/v4/player.cfm?songID=11413179