alnico pups and tone knobs.......

[FortyEight]

So, most of my guitar life has been with ceramic pups. my mexican early 90s tele sounded really good to me back in day. granted, a lot of gain used not ways but.....

so i got a cv squier jazz and its my first alnico type pups.

my experience with ceramics is as soon as u turn down tone knob, it starts to get muddied, muffled. the jazz bass i dont notice it being muffled til close to half. and really could use some dialing back.

compression too. ive heard it said by more than one and feel like i agree, ceramics have some compression. most of my recorded guitar tracks with ceramic pup equipped in guitars have a pretty easy to deal with signature. my mexican ceramic p bass has a bit more dynamics but still sounds compressed to me. live and recorded. the jazz could use compression, especially live. and roll off the top end.

now that may be cuz its a squier cv. but i sometimes play with guys that own custom shop teles and my ear tells me they sometimes could use a bit of roll off. although maybe my ears just prefer bass.

i realize these are generalizations and each guitar is different. but i also am curious if anyone else has found this a pattern that uses both types.

main reason for discussing is picking out pups to "upgrade" for the neck in my affinity tele and starcaster by fender strat.

 

[BB]

Check out Bootstrap pickups or Cavalier pickups. They are members here and both offer exceptional quality, tone, service and price.

I HATED ceramic pickups. Until I bought a used Peavey strat for $60.

Those dang, cheap, toneless pickups sounded excellent! I only had the guitar for a month before selling it, but played alone at home, or with the band, that darn guitar had the strat sound.

Delicious cleans.....the dirt tones were generally acceptable, but the cleans were all killah strat!

I guess it pays to actually listen with your ears before judging pickup magnets, etc.

 

[sjtalon]

>my experience with ceramics is as soon as u turn down tone knob, it starts to get muddied, muffled<

Try a lesser value tone cap then.

 

[Alex_C]

my experience with ceramics is as soon as u turn down tone knob, it starts to get muddied, muffled. the jazz bass i dont notice it being muffled til close to half. and really could use some dialing back.

>my experience with ceramics is as soon as u turn down tone knob, it starts to get muddied, muffled<

Try a lesser value tone cap then.

and a treble bleed circuit.

 

[68Telebass]

So, most of my guitar life has been with ceramic pups. my mexican early 90s tele sounded really good to me back in day. granted, a lot of gain used not ways but.....

so i got a cv squier jazz and its my first alnico type pups.

my experience with ceramics is as soon as u turn down tone knob, it starts to get muddied, muffled. the jazz bass i dont notice it being muffled til close to half. and really could use some dialing back.

compression too. ive heard it said by more than one and feel like i agree, ceramics have some compression. most of my recorded guitar tracks with ceramic pup equipped in guitars have a pretty easy to deal with signature. my mexican ceramic p bass has a bit more dynamics but still sounds compressed to me. live and recorded. the jazz could use compression, especially live. and roll off the top end.

now that may be cuz its a squier cv. but i sometimes play with guys that own custom shop teles and my ear tells me they sometimes could use a bit of roll off. although maybe my ears just prefer bass.

i realize these are generalizations and each guitar is different. but i also am curious if anyone else has found this a pattern that uses both types.

main reason for discussing is picking out pups to "upgrade" for the neck in my affinity tele and starcaster by fender strat.

Yup^^ Bootstrap or Cavalier.

Maybe an Artec p-90 single coil for Tele neck. Check out GuitarMadness for good prices and service if cost an issue- I love the Fat Pole P/J bass set I put into my Jaguar bass.

 

[Ebidis]

All of my guitars have alnico pickups except one. I have a MIM Standard Strat with MIM ceramic pickups. The thing is, I love those pickups. They've got cajones! They also have a lot of dynamic range.

 

[68Telebass]

So, most of my guitar life has been with ceramic pups. my mexican early 90s tele sounded really good to me back in day. granted, a lot of gain used not ways but.....

so i got a cv squier jazz and its my first alnico type pups.

my experience with ceramics is as soon as u turn down tone knob, it starts to get muddied, muffled. the jazz bass i dont notice it being muffled til close to half. and really could use some dialing back.

compression too. ive heard it said by more than one and feel like i agree, ceramics have some compression. most of my recorded guitar tracks with ceramic pup equipped in guitars have a pretty easy to deal with signature. my mexican ceramic p bass has a bit more dynamics but still sounds compressed to me. live and recorded. the jazz could use compression, especially live. and roll off the top end.

now that may be cuz its a squier cv. but i sometimes play with guys that own custom shop teles and my ear tells me they sometimes could use a bit of roll off. although maybe my ears just prefer bass.

i realize these are generalizations and each guitar is different. but i also am curious if anyone else has found this a pattern that uses both types.

main reason for discussing is picking out pups to "upgrade" for the neck in my affinity tele and starcaster by fender strat.

I love to window shop!! I like this Atrec p90 dog ear neck pick up

. Flea-Bay.
Now I need another Tele Bullet

 

[Swirling Snow]

Many designers look at the stronger ceramic magnets and think, "I can get more output!".

Leo thought, "I can put it further from the strings!".

 

[68Telebass]

Many designers look at the stronger ceramic magnets and think, "I can get more output!".

Leo thought, "I can put it further from the strings!".

Yes. It’s both. !!!
The “thick” single coil sound of a nicely placed Jazzmaster pickup.

Oooh- put in a Bootstrap “Lake Surfer” in there.

Bootstrap

Five hundred miles from saltwater on Ohio's northern shore is the last place you'd expect to find a dedicated surfing community. Every year though, when the weather is just right, the swells come rolling into the shores of Lake Erie, and a few enthusiastic souls grab their boards. The perfect...

bootstrappickups.com

 

[FortyEight]

i was reading up on p 90s and the consensus on the place i looked was that its not certain what value pot for a p90. u gotta try one and see 250 vs 500.

right now my starcaster has a new cts 500 and the tele has a 250. i may just leave the tele alone cuz the bridge sounds really good to me. and the inbetween is pretty good. but the neck lacks brightness, imho. my mexi teke back in the day, i mostly played on the neck and i loved it.

the starcaster is constantly being tweaked. every time i change the strings. lol. its like having a new guitar every time. lol.

next plan is to have the seymour duncan 1/4 pounder in the bridge and a mexi ceramic in the neck. if im not happy with that then im gonna think about humbuckers or p90s.

 

[Swirling Snow]

Any wiring with a blade switch makes me cross-eyed, but I've heard that you can wire a Tele so the tone control only works on the bridge. That would give the neck pickup more treble.

 

[Arfage]

So, most of my guitar life has been with ceramic pups. my mexican early 90s tele sounded really good to me back in day. granted, a lot of gain used not ways but.....

so i got a cv squier jazz and its my first alnico type pups.

my experience with ceramics is as soon as u turn down tone knob, it starts to get muddied, muffled. the jazz bass i dont notice it being muffled til close to half. and really could use some dialing back.

compression too. ive heard it said by more than one and feel like i agree, ceramics have some compression. most of my recorded guitar tracks with ceramic pup equipped in guitars have a pretty easy to deal with signature. my mexican ceramic p bass has a bit more dynamics but still sounds compressed to me. live and recorded. the jazz could use compression, especially live. and roll off the top end.

now that may be cuz its a squier cv. but i sometimes play with guys that own custom shop teles and my ear tells me they sometimes could use a bit of roll off. although maybe my ears just prefer bass.

i realize these are generalizations and each guitar is different. but i also am curious if anyone else has found this a pattern that uses both types.

main reason for discussing is picking out pups to "upgrade" for the neck in my affinity tele and starcaster by fender strat.

Having gone through the various trendy prejudices, I can tell you there are so many great sounding pickups out there with all the magnet types. Yes, all of them. Some of the old cheap strat pickups with the ceramic bar on the bottom are a blast to play, and some are junk. Some of of the priciest cork-sniffing alnico pickups are simply dogs; you just never know. Bardens, DiMarzio Super Distortion and all the Duncan strat sized humbuckers use ceramic. Too many to mention, and they are all great pickups. If you like it, it must sound good, and don't ley any know-it-all, online or otherwise tell you different.

 

[Mr Mojo 54]

Try a lesser value tone cap then.

This is a very useful approach. None of my tone caps are the stock values. I alligator clipped a range of different values to find the ones that really worked best. You can go really low in value and be able to use a wider range of the pot's travel. Like zooming in on the most useful area of the pot's response. I liked it so much I installed a P-P switch with two different values. It's almost like having a different guitar.

P.S. I use the volume and tone controls a lot.

 

[Supertwang]

If you play a lot of CLEANS go AlNiCo,…if you play mostly with DIRT I reccy you Ceramic pickups for girth. A lot of players will install AlNiCo pup in the neck position and a HO ceramic pup in the bridge position

 

[BlueGillGreg]

Remember if it gets muddy when you turn down the tone knob it could be either the tone cap or the tone pot. If so, I'm not sure that changing pickups would fix anything.

Not directly to your question, but on a related note, you didn't mention changing pickup height. It's easy and free, and might give you a better sound until you fix your underlying problem.

I have ceramic P-90s in a fake Les Paul, and they sound good through their whole dynamic range. To me they make the P-90 grind a little "grindier," which I like.

Good luck!

 

[FortyEight]

Any wiring with a blade switch makes me cross-eyed, but I've heard that you can wire a Tele so the tone control only works on the bridge. That would give the neck pickup more treble.

this sounds interesting. tell me more.

for me the less crap in the way the better. ive yet to own a guitar where i didnt hit a switch a time or two. a teles set up is about as good as it gets for me. although ive seen others that would work but they are usually on bodies that dont work. i like a strats body better.

if i could live with just the sound of a bridge pup, id be in heaven. a bridge pup with 1 volume knob is a great thing. problem is i like neck sounds a lot. on most guitars. lol.

 

[Antigua Tele]

So, most of my guitar life has been with ceramic pups. my mexican early 90s tele sounded really good to me back in day. granted, a lot of gain used not ways but.....

so i got a cv squier jazz and its my first alnico type pups.

my experience with ceramics is as soon as u turn down tone knob, it starts to get muddied, muffled. the jazz bass i dont notice it being muffled til close to half. and really could use some dialing back.

compression too. ive heard it said by more than one and feel like i agree, ceramics have some compression. most of my recorded guitar tracks with ceramic pup equipped in guitars have a pretty easy to deal with signature. my mexican ceramic p bass has a bit more dynamics but still sounds compressed to me. live and recorded. the jazz could use compression, especially live. and roll off the top end.

now that may be cuz its a squier cv. but i sometimes play with guys that own custom shop teles and my ear tells me they sometimes could use a bit of roll off. although maybe my ears just prefer bass.

i realize these are generalizations and each guitar is different. but i also am curious if anyone else has found this a pattern that uses both types.

main reason for discussing is picking out pups to "upgrade" for the neck in my affinity tele and starcaster by fender strat.

IME, the presence and the treble of the amp you're using as a lot to do with it. If you start out with not much treble to begin with, it drops off easy. Famous Fender black face amps have an excess of brightness on hand, so the tone control is very interactive, even with ceramic pickups, but with a Marshall or other such amps, you often won't want to touch the tone knob at all.

AlNiCos almost always have a higher resonant peak, so they would solve the problem to an extent, but they will sound all together different, so you'd be changing more than just the tone control action.

Replacing the cap value won't matter much, as it mostly mattes when the tone controls is closer to zero, and I think your area of concern is closer to ten on the tone control.

 

[FabriceKaiser]

So, most of my guitar life has been with ceramic pups. my mexican early 90s tele sounded really good to me back in day. granted, a lot of gain used not ways but.....

so i got a cv squier jazz and its my first alnico type pups.

my experience with ceramics is as soon as u turn down tone knob, it starts to get muddied, muffled. the jazz bass i dont notice it being muffled til close to half. and really could use some dialing back.

compression too. ive heard it said by more than one and feel like i agree, ceramics have some compression. most of my recorded guitar tracks with ceramic pup equipped in guitars have a pretty easy to deal with signature. my mexican ceramic p bass has a bit more dynamics but still sounds compressed to me. live and recorded. the jazz could use compression, especially live. and roll off the top end.

now that may be cuz its a squier cv. but i sometimes play with guys that own custom shop teles and my ear tells me they sometimes could use a bit of roll off. although maybe my ears just prefer bass.

i realize these are generalizations and each guitar is different. but i also am curious if anyone else has found this a pattern that uses both types.

main reason for discussing is picking out pups to "upgrade" for the neck in my affinity tele and starcaster by fender strat.

This will probably get me barred from this page but I have no issues with ceramic pickups, not even the single coil ones. I also used to have an MIM Tele Standard and always thought it sounded great.
I haven't noticed either that one type of pickup necessarily had a different response to tone roll off. I think it's just that different pickups naturally respond differently to it.
Also, by any account, a Jazzmaster should be a fair bit darker sounding than a Tele.

 

[myfenderissues]

So, most of my guitar life has been with ceramic pups. my mexican early 90s tele sounded really good to me back in day. granted, a lot of gain used not ways but.....

so i got a cv squier jazz and its my first alnico type pups.

my experience with ceramics is as soon as u turn down tone knob, it starts to get muddied, muffled. the jazz bass i dont notice it being muffled til close to half. and really could use some dialing back.

compression too. ive heard it said by more than one and feel like i agree, ceramics have some compression. most of my recorded guitar tracks with ceramic pup equipped in guitars have a pretty easy to deal with signature. my mexican ceramic p bass has a bit more dynamics but still sounds compressed to me. live and recorded. the jazz could use compression, especially live. and roll off the top end.

now that may be cuz its a squier cv. but i sometimes play with guys that own custom shop teles and my ear tells me they sometimes could use a bit of roll off. although maybe my ears just prefer bass.

i realize these are generalizations and each guitar is different. but i also am curious if anyone else has found this a pattern that uses both types.

main reason for discussing is picking out pups to "upgrade" for the neck in my affinity tele and starcaster by fender strat.

it's not the magnet type in terms of making the pickup magnetic, it has to do with the composition of alnico, which is an alloy with different electrical (and hence tone) characteristics than other iron based metal poles. the poles in c mag pu's are usually cheap pot metal. the alnico composition, and not their magnitization, is what gives strat and tele pu's their glassy, open tone you don't find in c mag units. the property is termed 'inductance', which is a poorly understood characteristic out in the general public where we tend to look at a pu's resistance to predict the pu's tone response. if you take non-magnitized alnico poles (which you can buy) and stick the right strength of c mag on them to make them magnetic, you get the same tonal effect as magnitized alnico poles.

 

[Swirling Snow]

Make a guitar with just a neck pup.

Connect the tone control to bridge pickup contact on the switch. Then you should have bridge with tone control, both with tone control, neck with no tone control. Taking the tone control out will boost that peak the others are talking about and should give your neck some bite.