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Post by LVF on May 15, 2022 11:33:00 GMT -5
I bought this guitar new back in '03 and for the most part, has been used with my GK 3 system to power my VG 99 contraption. Having experienced what the pick ups sound like in recent days has revealed how thin they are. So, time to upgrade them along with the electronics and a new look. I will not reveal the new look until it's been upgraded and finished. This is a project in it's very beginning at this point. However, I have ordered the electronics and an aesthetic touch that will surely be eye popping...well...maybe not that, more eye pooping and an assault on your eyes but, I'ma goin' to do it anyways. OK, enough about the hype. It probably wont' be that bad anyway...maybe. OK, with that said, I now concentrate on the selection of pick ups I have...selected for consideration and narrowed this selection down to two sets. A '50's style set and a '60's style set. I will purchase one of them from Sweetwater. Here are separate links to both: "50's style and '60's style. And...just for fun I ran across this set of which I dabbled in the possibilities. Now, I like the idea of either of the two sets but, I'm leaning toward the '60's style. They sound like they will have a fullness to them that is sadly lacking in the current set residing in my '03 Agave Blue [made in Mexico] strat. Neither have much in the review department so, my consideration is down to the description Sweetwater provides. Anybody have any experience with these two selections? What are those experiences, likes, dislikes? For now, the beat goes on.  Guitar in question  |
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Post by Leftee on May 15, 2022 12:26:32 GMT -5
I have a set of Fat ‘50’s in a build and they are my favorite Strat pickups to date. Being a lefty I did push the high E poles up a tad. It was a gutsy move, but it paid off.
I’ve not had experience with that other set.
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Post by Auf Kiltre on May 15, 2022 15:26:18 GMT -5
No experience with either set but just curious what the stagger is on the stock set in the guitar (or radius on that neck). I have seen some say that any radius 10" or flatter should not have a vintage stagger. In practice I have a vintage stagger on a 9.5 radius board with no issues. I do have a Musikraft 10" radius board but that guitar has a set of Wilde Noisefrees with flat poles.
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Post by LVF on May 15, 2022 15:57:23 GMT -5
Argent Blue. Maybe that's the color of this guitar although Agave Blue would be cooler 'cause the Agave plant or bush is used as an ingredient in Tequila. Argent Blue is associated more with a herbicide used in Viet Nam.  I'm going with Agave Blue. Now, as to the radius of this guitar, it is 9.5 inches. Should be no issue with using either of the choices I'm considering. Also, it good to hear that there is somebody who has experience with one of these selections but, I'm still leaning toward the '60's series. Thank you for your input on this, Leftee. |
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Post by Leftee on May 15, 2022 16:22:02 GMT -5
I believe the color is Agave Blue.
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Post by LVF on May 16, 2022 9:43:35 GMT -5
Today I think I will dig into this guitar and check out the electronics. Never had this one apart but, don't expect anything out the ordinary. As for the pick up selection, I'm going with the fat '60's. I didn't expect to get too much attention on the selections I was considering for what should be obvious reasons but, doesn't hurt to ask. Thanks again, to you, Leftee, for your input. I don't think I could go wrong with either choice. Today is a good day to order pick ups. If there's something interesting that awaits the inside of this guitar, I'll post a pic. I'll probably do that anyway even if there isn't.  |
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Post by Auf Kiltre on May 16, 2022 10:34:34 GMT -5
I couldn't find all the specs on the Fat 60s but saw this posted on another forum:
"Fender Fat 60's, AlNiCo 2 magnets
Bridge: 6.7k ohms, 2.8 henries
Middle: 6.7k ohms, 2.8 henries
Neck: 6.7k ohms, 2.8 henries"
Interesting, I never had A2 mags in Strat pickups before, only 1 Humbucker and 1 P90. Being that all pickups have the same ohm rating (allegedly) I personally would have a baseplate on standby for the bridge pickup.
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Post by LVF on May 16, 2022 15:15:40 GMT -5
As I suspected, nothing new to see in the pic. Normal strat guts. I did measurements of the pots to see what they were running at and found out were the thinness comes from. Here are the ohms for the pickups in positions 1 thru 5, all measured in K ohms: 1. 6.89, bridge 2. 3.50, bridge, middle 3. 6.85, middle 4. 3.50, middle, neck 5. 6.89, neck Judging by the numbers that were provided by Auf Kiltre [thanks!], I holpe I'm not going in the wrong direction. When they speak of 'fat' pickups, I always think that they will be a fuller sounding pickup. Measuring the pots, I find that their measurements in both tone pots to be way off by more than I would suspect. The lower or #1 pot measures @ 274K and the #2 or middle pot measures at 290K. They are both rated at 250K. I have to go re-read the threads that are dealing with pots to see what these measurements mean.  |
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Post by Leftee on May 16, 2022 15:37:39 GMT -5
I wouldn’t worry too much about the tone pots.
The pickups in that guitar will be bright. That was always my experience.
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Post by Auf Kiltre on May 16, 2022 16:48:47 GMT -5
Yeah, I wouldn't let the comparison between your existing set's ohm readings scare you away from the Fat 60s. I don't know much about henries and of course the Alnico 2 mags are another variable. My warmest sounding Strat has Fralin Real 54's which are 6k 6k 6.7k bridge and Alnico 3 mags. Tried another set of the 54s in a different Strat and found them a little insipid. Too many variables for me to make any sense of it, lol.
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Post by LVF on May 17, 2022 12:46:18 GMT -5
It's my understanding that a higher ohm reading brings out the growl, as it were, in pick ups. You don't really get any idea what pick ups will sound like until you get them and try them out. It's really the only time you can 'test drive' them so, it's a roll of the dice. I still have a good feeling about these '60's selections though.
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Post by Leftee on May 17, 2022 13:39:54 GMT -5
When referring to the volume pot, a higher resistance will yield a slightly brighter tone and possibly a perceived louder output - or more "bite."
I would say follow your instincts and dive in with those '60s. They do sound like they'd be all that.
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Post by LVF on May 17, 2022 15:13:42 GMT -5
I was just over at the 'audio/linear' thread, reading through it and what I got out of it was 1, the search goes on for the 'holy' sound and 2, everybody seems to be able to find that sound to their ears. I didn't really want to get that deep into it as I seem to be able to set my tone to the sound I like regardless of the pots used. Other than that, it goes to much into the weeds for me. However, if I was a gigmeister, it would probably be important to be able to 'roll the knobs' with confidence relying on the performance of the pots to answer the call. As far as pickups go, I hadn't really noticed how thin these stock pups were in this guitar but, after experiencing the pups in my other guitars, it became clear to me how inferior they are and there was lots of room for improvement. I have pots on order also and from what I've read, they are the hated [apparently] CTS's. I have them in my Warmoth and they seem to work for me just fine. |
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Post by Leftee on May 17, 2022 15:17:38 GMT -5
CTS are fine.
Everything goes through cycles of being loved and hated. 😂
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Post by Pinetree on May 18, 2022 8:55:56 GMT -5
I use Alpha pots all the time and nobody complains.
Might be a good time to shield the guitar while you're in there.
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Post by LVF on May 18, 2022 19:44:47 GMT -5
I have shielding tape at the ready.
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Post by LVF on May 20, 2022 17:31:33 GMT -5
An update on this. I found out today that Sweetwater dropped the ball on my pickups. Something that is very rare with them but, anyway, I was told they would ship today and so, I should get them sometime next week. In the meantime, I started with the electrics and installed the pots and switch from Warmoth. Note in the pic, I used 'senior' gauge wire; wiring for seniors. Made it easier to see.  That and it's what I had on hand. I also used a cap from one of my Blues Jrs. Maybe it will add some MoJo. The pic on the right is the stock wiring. More to follow...  |
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Post by funkykikuchiyo on May 20, 2022 19:03:45 GMT -5
The links aren't working....
Fender switched back to plain enamel at some point in the '60s before going to poly-nylon, and the '50s would be heavy formvar. Usually when someone is going for a mid/late '60s Fender pickup tone with plain enamel they use A5 (Texas Specials, Robert Cray Strat, most things loosely branded as Hendrix-y), so I'm curious what they're up to with the A2 version. Maybe it is more early 60s...? Hmmm. They seem interesting. I'll definitely be awaiting your review!
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Post by funkykikuchiyo on May 20, 2022 19:26:39 GMT -5
It's my understanding that a higher ohm reading brings out the growl, as it were, in pick ups. You don't really get any idea what pick ups will sound like until you get them and try them out. It's really the only time you can 'test drive' them so, it's a roll of the dice. I still have a good feeling about these '60's selections though. Ohms tell you incredibly little, unfortunately. The upside to that is that you shouldn't worry about what your old pickups are measuring if you didn't like 'em.
The pickup uses a really long piece of wire that is long and thin enough that it has resistance that is readable with a normal DMM. With the exact same gauge wire, a longer piece will have higher resistance. So, in apples v apples comparisons a higher number will mean more wire and thus more windings, which makes it hotter and drops the resonant peak. But, other things will make the number go up, like a thinner wire (sometimes just tolerances), how tightly it is wound (it gets thinned on the ends as the winder turns), winding pattern, form factor, and all sorts of other things.
Pickups are really hard to understand. I found henries to be the best for a rough approximation of how hot they'd be, but that is imperfect. The good pickup makers know how to bake a product that is going to work for people without making them agonize over specs. I always thought our friend Aaron Campbell was really good at that.
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Post by Pinetree on May 21, 2022 7:37:33 GMT -5
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Post by LVF on May 21, 2022 9:56:08 GMT -5
It's my understanding that a higher ohm reading brings out the growl, as it were, in pick ups. You don't really get any idea what pick ups will sound like until you get them and try them out. It's really the only time you can 'test drive' them so, it's a roll of the dice. I still have a good feeling about these '60's selections though. Ohms tell you incredibly little, unfortunately. The upside to that is that you shouldn't worry about what your old pickups are measuring if you didn't like 'em.
The pickup uses a really long piece of wire that is long and thin enough that it has resistance that is readable with a normal DMM. With the exact same gauge wire, a longer piece will have higher resistance. So, in apples v apples comparisons a higher number will mean more wire and thus more windings, which makes it hotter and drops the resonant peak. But, other things will make the number go up, like a thinner wire (sometimes just tolerances), how tightly it is wound (it gets thinned on the ends as the winder turns), winding pattern, form factor, and all sorts of other things.
Pickups are really hard to understand. I found henries to be the best for a rough approximation of how hot they'd be, but that is imperfect. The good pickup makers know how to bake a product that is going to work for people without making them agonize over specs. I always thought our friend Aaron Campbell was really good at that.
Pickups are one of those things you don't really know what you get until you have and install them. It seems that way to me anyway. It's also one of those things that when asked about experiences with a particular brand or model, you are fortunate if you can find several people who have said brand or model so you have an idea what you're getting into before you purchase them. Trying to focus on a particular model such as these 'fat '60's' make it more difficult This forum is full of very knowledgeable folks like you, that can opine on pickups with some accuracy even if you don't have them. But, I don't know what 'henries' are.  Unless you are talking about Fralins(?) then, I'm not really sure about that. This kind of thing isn't something I do on a regular basis but, I found a need to an upgrade for this. The fact that we are documenting this may help others as well. |
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Post by funkykikuchiyo on May 21, 2022 10:22:30 GMT -5
Pickups are one of those things you don't really know what you get until you have and install them. It seems that way to me anyway. For all intensive porpoises, absolutely yes.
A big problem, I think, is that the generic guitar mag vocabulary to describe different sounds/balances/textures of guitar tone are horribly insufficient. The best example of this is one I've given here before: a client of mine had a few Carvins and complained the pickups were too bright. I checked the cavity and found .047uf caps for the tone circuit. I put .022uf caps in there, and it was much better. But, aren't .022uf caps "brighter"? Well, sort of. They roll off "less" high end, but the .047uf shifts the resonant peak down lower than the .022uf does, and with a medium/hot pickup, that is going to give a very harsh upper midrange. A lower cap value will smooth that out. So, the pickups sounded "brighter" even when there was less high end because it had that upper midrange spike. The terminology available just failed in that situation. I made a guitar less bright by making it more bright. "Warm" is an even worse term. I like "warm" tone, but what is "warm"? A Nocaster through a Princeton can sound very "warm", while a Les Paul through a Mesa might not sound "warm". Swapping a cast stopbar for an aluminum one on a Gibson - it makes it brighter, but also warmer. Well, which is it?
The technology likely exists to measure all of this stuff (computers work at very high frequencies and this stuff becomes incredibly critical for them to function), but AC electronics tends to be the domain of fairly advanced electrical engineers. My MIT educated electrical engineer cousin told me AC electronics really kicked his butt. When most techs are just using DC multimeters or LCR meters that test at two frequencies, you aren't going to get much. Fun fact: One major builder of guitars has helped design medical test equipment for a major university. My guess is that working with wonky AC electronics for years gave him sort of a sixth sense of what would make the equipment more efficient. (Google search isn't turning anything up so it might be private in weird trade secret whatever, so I'll leave it there)
Henries measure inductance. An electric guitar pickup is just an inductor coil that turns changes in a magnetic field into a small voltage. (Slight tangent and point of interest: the magnets don't sense the string... the magnet creates a field to magnetize the string, and the coil senses the string) So, it is more native to the unit's function than DCR, since a pickup isn't a resistor.... it just has resistance as one of its properties. It is going to reasonably correlate with how hot the pickup is, and where the resonant peak is (the higher the H, the lower the RP), but in practice it isn't a perfect measurement. Besides, H isn't published for a lot of pickups, so one pickup's data in isolation will be meaningless. You'd have to see a list of other pickups and be able to compare them to other pickups where you know the sound.
tl;dr the good pickup builders make products that has mass appeal, are able to figure out the sort of person it should be marketed towards, and something good enough that even if it isn't the PERFECT product for someone's needs, it'll just sound good enough that it'll still be a great sound.
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Post by Pinetree on May 21, 2022 10:29:53 GMT -5
I've been swapping out pickups since the '70s, and all I know that is if it sounds good it is good.
One time I switched the Fralin blues specials from one guitar with the Custom Shop'69s from another and it just didn't work at all.
The guitar will tell you what it needs, if you just listen.. I have found this to be especially true with strings, but that's a whole 'nother rabbit hole.
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Post by LVF on May 23, 2022 15:15:50 GMT -5
Got the Fat '60's today after I gave Sweetwater a nudge and I also ordered a dozen trem arm springs as well. Got them to line up [somewhat] like little soldiers ["OK, in the back! Shut yur pie hole, maggot!"] ( ). Got the little baggie of candy as well. This must be the covid/inflation/recession version. No Atom fireballs. Instead, they put what looks to be a root beer drop in it's place. I note that 'hardware' is included with the new pickups. It must be the 'bean counter version' of the new hardware. I'll use some of the hardware from the stock piece. They used springs as part of the mounting of the stock pickups to the PG. Also, the specs were stated on the box for the @ 6.7Ω and 2.8H for each pickup.  |
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Post by Leftee on May 23, 2022 15:40:31 GMT -5
I ordered a trio of SD flat Quarter Pounds from Sweetwater because they had one marked down as a demo. They’re going in the build in my thread here.
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Post by LVF on May 23, 2022 17:25:45 GMT -5
Ah...so, you are going for edgy and gritty? I look up you choice and that's basically what it said about them. Well, it's looking like I will be showing off my choice of PG before this guitar is done because I have so many choices in PU and knob pigment combinations. However, I will not be using the covers sent with the PU's. I think they removed all the white on rice and gave it to these PU covers. So, if I chose white, it'll be the knobs and covers from this guitar. They are aged quite nicely. Anyway, that means I need more pics showing some of these choices to see what folks would chose for themselves. Coming up in a bit. |
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Post by LVF on May 23, 2022 18:35:44 GMT -5
Well, here ya go. Here are to possible choices I'm considering. The black knob look or the white knob look I'll call it. Combinations can be done as well but, I'm likely to chose one of these and I'm leaning toward the white knobs because of the contrast between them and the new PG I chose for this guitar. What would be your choice? If you hate either choice, please don't burn your media device.   |
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Post by Leftee on May 23, 2022 19:56:06 GMT -5
I like black.
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Post by Auf Kiltre on May 24, 2022 7:00:29 GMT -5
I like the white plastic better.
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Post by LVF on May 24, 2022 10:29:27 GMT -5
I think they both look good. I have made a choice and it's not going to be what I was leaning toward. Another thing that came under consideration was my other strat which is an HSS Lone Star. It has the white covers and knobs, of course, so, I decided to have a piece of each. One white, one black, issue settled. Now, might I direct your attention to another issue I'm finding about these new PU's. I don't know what Fender(?) was thinking but, the hardware they included with the PU's is pretty much useless. When I was sort of bashing them for the 'bean counter' comment, I have to believe that's how they put this hardware package together. First, the fastener screws for the PU's are almost too short, about a quarter inch shorter and they are beveled! Where does Fender use short, beveled screws for PU fasteners? Good thing I can use what's on the stock piece. Another thing I noticed is the diagram they sent for these PU's. The set up for wiring the PU's is not really an issue, just a bit different to how I wired the pots up as I merely set them up in the stock fashion. In the diagram provided, the wire connection on the bottom pot uses the middle terminal on it, to the outer most [away from switch] terminal on the middle pot. The solder connection between the bottom pot and the switch uses the outer terminal [switch side] to the switch connection. They also show a .5032 MFD disc cap soldered to this same, outer, terminal on the middle pot, also grounded to the top of the pot. They did not provide this .5uA cap in the hardware package, IMO, they should have. I think I have one in a electrolytic but, wouldn't that be a bit much for this application? Wouldn't it affect dissipation of the cap? Anyway, I'll consider changing out the cap, it's location and adjusting the wiring situation. Why are they using a .5uA cap? Does the wiring they show in the diagram allow the use of the lower tone pot for the bridge PU? Heck, may as well provide a pic of the diagram...  |
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I'm going with Agave Blue. 
That and it's what I had on hand. I also used a cap from one of my Blues Jrs. Maybe it will add some MoJo. The pic on the right is the stock wiring. More to follow...
Unless you are talking about Fralins(?) then, I'm not really sure about that. This kind of thing isn't something I do on a regular basis but, I found a need to an upgrade for this. The fact that we are documenting this may help others as well.