Working out a better tone with your existing pickups

jaymenon

I have a Partscaster, the electrified tone of which I really never bonded with.  Finally fitted an overwound set of Kinman Woodstock Plus pickups, but it never sounded quite right, despite various height adjustments.  

Not enough sparkle - but increasing the treble, or using the bright switch on the amplifier, just made it sound harsh.

Unplugged, the instrument actually sounds rather nice - and so I considered changing out the pickups. But it’s a 16" radius neck and getting pickups with the appropriate polepiece stagger is a nuisance - and if I don’t like them then I’d be left with the hassle of trying to sell them.

Well I’ve got a graphic eq in the effects loop of my amplifier (nothing fancy - a modded Boss GE-7). So I sat down with that and started tweaking the faders.  

Interestingly, it was easy to identify (very quickly) the frequency that was bugging my ears - in my case at 1.6K. With that fader  very slightly lowered, the instrument started to sound beautiful in all five positions of the selector switch.

Just thought I’d share this, since it is a simple, user controllable, reversible and very potent way of tweaking your tone to your liking. Since it comes after the preamp section of the amplifier, the eq is at the most potent part of your signal chain, a bit like the HRM eq on a Dumble style amp...

...and you can even add a slight boost without saturating your tone any further :-)

ICBM

If you do want to change pickups, don't worry about the stagger - 16" is flat enough that flat poles will be fine. They are even with a tighter radius.